Pictured: Maths teacher awarded nearly £45,000 after being sacked from job at all-girls grammar school when pupils ‘made up sex assault claims against him for fun in playground plot’

This is the male teacher who was awarded almost £45,000 after being sacked from a girls’ school after pupils allegedly made up sexual abuse claims ‘for fun’.

Jonathan Hawker, a math and computer teacher, is seen smiling and happy in a series of photos with family and his golden retriever Ralph.

But his world was turned upside down when students at Plymouth’s Devonport High School for Girls made ‘career-ending accusations’ against him in 2021.

Despite having an unblemished record during his five years at the school, Mr Hawker was suspended, arrested and then dismissed for ‘gross misconduct’ – amid reports that the girls had admitted to lying about everything ‘because it was fun used to be’.

The teacher has now been awarded £44,868 after a tribunal in Bristol decided the school had carried out a ‘wholly inadequate’ investigation and failed to ‘provide a safe working environment for staff, particularly males’.

Mr Hawker, a father as well as a keen skier and mountain biker from Plymouth, is said to have since found a new job but could not be reached for comment on the verdict.

Employment judge Martha Street criticized the school’s investigation into the girls’ allegations.

saying, ‘A fair investigation would have at least included a transcript of the interviews with them.

‘I make no comment on whether Mr Hawker committed the alleged misconduct.

‘What I can say is that if he is innocent, and a playground incident can end a career and destroy a reputation, then the school is not providing a safe working environment for its staff, especially its male staff.

“No reasonable employer would conclude that the younger girls provided truthful testimony in good faith and beyond a reasonable doubt; that is, without examining the contrary evidence, including the older girls’ contemporary evidence of a plot against Mr Hawker.

‘In a career-ending case, the investigation must be as complete as possible.

“This fell far short of that. The school accepted the evidence of the younger students without any challenge or investigation and ignored, disregarded or avoided finding contrary evidence.”

In June 2021, a student wrote a statement to her teacher that another girl – identified only as Student H – had said Mr Hawker had touched her leg, the hearing was told.

Ruth Morgan, the head of security, spoke to Student H, who said Mr Hawker had knelt next to her during a lesson and placed his hand on her thigh, the tribunal heard.

In further conversations with other students, Ms Morgan heard of a “similar incident” described by students, as well as false rumors that Mr Hawker had previously been suspended for “touching a Year 9 student” and had an affair with a sixth student.

The hearing was told that Ms Morgan, at the behest of the school’s acting headmaster, Beverly Bell, took statements from the girls.

One girl, Student D, reported that Mr Hawker had made her feel ‘very uncomfortable’ by ‘massaging my shoulders and caressing my arms’.

She said she had seen Mr Hawker caressing other girls’ thighs and that other girls, Student G and Student F, had said that had happened to them.

The teacher was also accused of winking at girls.

As a result of numerous other reports from the girls, all alleging serious misconduct, Mr Hawker was suspended on June 28, 2021 pending the investigation.

However, in July, two girls from the previous year said they stood by the group of accusers when they admitted they had tried to get Mr Hawker fired ‘for fun’.

When the older couple asked why, one of the girls told them “because it was fun” and another added, “Yes, we said he touched our thighs in an attempt to get him off for sexual assault.”

This was reported to Mrs. Bell on July 9, before the school year ended on July 23.

However, the court heard that the school ‘appeared to reject’ the older students’ statement.

In September 2021, Mr Hawker was arrested in a “brutal experience” after two members of the original group agreed to police involvement, the hearing was told. It was his first knowledge of the allegations.

An internal investigation was launched at the school in November.

Ms Morgan interviewed Students D, E, F and G – with Student D retracting some allegations and saying she no longer wanted to be involved.

She did not interview the older students, L and M, about what they had talked to the girls about, but categorized it as ‘unestablished facts’.

In December 2021, Mr Hawker was invited to an “investigative interview” during which he said students F and G had “made up” stories after he separated them for not doing any work.

Ms Morgan’s report concluded that Mr Hawker ‘overstepped boundaries and failed to consider the welfare of students’ and ‘repeatedly’ recited her view that he was guilty of each charge.

At a disciplinary hearing in February last year, Mr Hawker was dismissed for serious misconduct.

In March 2022, the police decided that the charges against him would not proceed.

The following April, a temporary banning order from the Teachers Regulation Agency banning him from the classroom was lifted.