A headteacher has been struck off for failing to alert authorities to concerns surrounding a seven-year-old girl who was later beaten to death by her family.

Shanay Walker died after being subjected to years of harrowing abuse at the hands of her aunt, Kay-Ann Morris, and grandmother Juanila Smikle, who were jailed for eight and four years respectively for child cruelty in 2015 - a year after her death. A judge described the abuse as “just about the worst case of child cruelty it is possible to imagine”.

Shanay, who was placed in her aunt’s care in 2012 after her mother suffered post-natal depression, was shoved into a wall if she “stole” water, dragged by her hair and was also made to sleep on urine-soaked bedding if she wet herself. The little girl was found with 50 separate injuries when she died of a brain bleed.

A misconduct panel found Peter Smalley, of Southglade Primary School, where she was a pupil, oversaw "widespread confusion" and "repeated failures". Concerns logged by her class teacher just 13 days before she died were never acted upon, the panel heard.

Today, her former headteacher at Southglade Primary School, Nottingham, Peter Smalley, 44, was banned from teaching.