A primary school teacher had sexual conversations about young girls on social media and sent an image of one pupil’s worn underwear, it has emerged.

Forty-year-old Owen Lowrie was teaching at a County Durham primary school when he sent the picture and engaged in sexualised conversations about girls aged between six and nine.

Appearing before a misconduct panel earlier this month he accepted a string of allegations against him including that his conduct was sexually motivated.

Lowrie sent a picture of a pupil’s worn underwear to a person online and received a Category C indecent image of a child.

The teacher allowed pupils to sit on his knee and stroked one student’s hair while they sat on his knee.

He also carried another pupil in a fireman’s lift while he held his hand across their bottom and upper thigh area.

A witness said they saw him pick up the pupil, who had injured herself during playtime, and that he had his hand up the pupil’s skirt on, on her bottom.

The misconduct panel heard concerns were first raised about his interaction with female pupils in late 2017 but his school continued to observe him engaging in inappropriate physical contact with girls despite the warning.

One fellow staff member at the school said that while she didn’t have any major concerns about Lowrie she had an “uneasy feeling” about him.

He left the school in spring of 2020 and was arrested by police that September after reports he had been engaging in sexualised conversations online relating to children.

Lowrie accepted in a police interview he had been engaging in sexualised chat about young female children and sending non-nude images of children to other participants. He admitted to officers he’d sent a picture of a pupil’s used underwear.

No criminal charges were brought against him.

The investigating officer told the panel that although Lowrie faced no criminal charges, it was her professional opinion that anyone who engages in sexualised conversations about juveniles displays a clear and real risk to children.

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The misconduct panel found that Lowrie was guilty of unacceptable professional conduct.

It added that his actions had been “calculated” and “sexually motivated”, and said it had seen no evidence of remorse from the teacher.

Lowrie was banned from the classroom, or working in any college, youth accommodation or children’s home in England.

His ban will be for life due to the “seriousness of the findings, including sexual motivated behaviour with children, and the lack of either insight or remorse”, the panel said.