A 61-YEAR-OLD school bursar bought two cars and paid off his own debts with £40,000 stolen from his employers.

Michael Hall was paid £60,000 a year with free accommodation at Kingham Hill School, near Chipping Norton, but still used school funds for his own use.

Oxford Crown Court was told last Friday that Hall wrote seven cheques between 2003 and 2009 worth a total of £43,258. Two of the cheques paid for cars while the other five cleared the defendant’s credit card debt, prosecutor Kevin West said. Hall had been at the school, where his wife was the librarian, since 1999 but was suspended following these allegations in November last year.

Mr West said Hall, who drank three bottles of whisky a week, checked himself into a hotel in January this year, emailed a confession to a member of staff and tried to commit suicide. Stephen Parker, defending, said his client had already paid back £20,000 to the school and intended to reimburse a further £17,000 in the near future. He said: “He thinks it was a combination of factors, the depression, the heavy drinking and the pressure that led him to behave in the manner in which he did. “His life, clearly, is in a state of ruin.”

In a letter written to the headmaster by Hall, he said: “Words cannot express my sorrow in all of this, nor can any real explanation be made for why I did it.”

Recorder Peter Wallis called it a “substantial sum” and a “very significant breach of trust” and jailed Hall, now living in Glossop, Derbyshire, for two years.