Alex Lloyd, a former teacher and head of sixth form in Bournemouth, has been drummed out of the profession for making remarks that many would find intemperate, even insulting, but few would seriously call career-ending. 

In 2022, Lloyd led a PSHE lesson on so-called ‘honour’ killings. When two pupils giggled during his lesson, he shouted that honour-based abuse, including FGM, was ‘a serious matter’ that affected their culture specifically. According to a report by the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) in October 2025, Lloyd was visibly annoyed, insisting ‘this was real’ and ‘happening mainly because of [their] culture’.

He urged one pupil to ‘imagine this was your mum being killed’, told another she would be killed if she wore her outfit in Iran, and sarcastically referred to the ‘religion of peace’. Technically we don’t know which faith he was referring to, given the TRA saw fit to redact all references to what is presumably Islam in the report, but we can deduce.

The TRA decided that the ‘serious nature of Mr Lloyd’s conduct’ should be reflected in his punishment. Consequently he was banned from teaching indefinitely.

Without a doubt, Lloyd overstepped a professional boundary by making his criticisms needlessly personal. It is one thing to introduce pupils to critiques of a religion. It is another to home in on individuals of that faith, especially as a figure of authority. Singling out children in front of their peers and resorting to sarcasm is clearly........

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