Pictured: Craig Ward, 36, has been banned from teaching after sending explicit messages to a male pupil at a school in Warrington
A male PE teacher who once won £50,000 on Channel 4's Million Pound Drop has been banned from working after bombarding a pupil with sexually explicit messages.
Craig Ward, 36, sent multiple texts over Facebook Messenger telling the boy, who cannot be named, that he wanted to perform sex acts on him.
He also gave him unsupervised lifts in his car, plied him with vodka and asked the boy to buy things from the shop for him.
The panel heard that Ward had initiated the contact with the pupil, initially regarding football and schoolwork.
The subject of the messages then developed into requests for the boy to pick up items from the shop for him, before the messages became sexual, the panel heard.
Ward, who won £50,000 when he appeared on Channel 4's Million Pound Drop in 2011, also sent messages in the early hours of the morning and during school holidays.
After receiving the first sexual messages, the pupil stated he was 'shocked, confused and did not know how to respond and just wanted the messages to stop'.
The boy said he took half an hour to reply because he was so shocked and feared if he did not respond, Ward might keep messaging him.
Ward, who was a teacher at Padgate Academy in Warrington, Cheshire, from 2013 was investigated by police when the boy reported the messages in 2017.
The school carried out an investigation in September and October 2018 following the conclusion of the police probe.
Ward, who once appeared on Channel 4's Million Pound Drop where he won a share of £100k, told the male pupil he wanted to have sex with him in texts sent over Facebook messenger
Ward attended an investigatory interview in October 2018, but resigned from his post in January 2019 - the day before he was due to attend a disciplinary hearing.
A report of the hearing states that Ward admits the allegations.
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