A grammar school head teacher has blamed hackers after a pornographic tweet was "liked" from his Twitter account.

Kevin Moody, head teacher of Oakwood Park Grammar School, Maidstone, was alerted by another member of staff to a video circulating among sixth form students showing a tweet carrying a porn video being liked from his account.

An email was sent out to pupils this week revealing Mr Moody's account had since been deleted and warned students that sharing the video would breach the school's behaviour policy.

Mr Moody said: “I had an email from a member of staff on Tuesday saying some students had spotted an inappropriate video was on my Twitter account.

“It was possible I was hacked so I closed my Twitter account and asked students not to send this around and asked other members of staff to be careful.

“I closed my account to be on the safe side. It was something I was quite shocked to see. I have told staff that if they see anything suspicious then they should tell me.”

The statement sent to pupils read: "We are aware than offensive video from the hacked account has been circulated within the Sixth Form community.

"The hacked account has been deactivated and we would ask students to support the school community in ensuring that this material is not circulated any further as doing so would be a breach of the school's behaviour policy."

Twitter introduced the “like” button in 2015 to replace the “favourite” function to give users the chance to either endorse or praise somebody’s tweet.

A former pupil of the school, who did not want to be named, was shocked to see the tweet being liked from Mr Moody’s account and felt teachers should be extra careful when using social media.

He said: “I was pretty appalled by it and it surprised me. I would expect teachers not to do something like that where it can be seen publicly.”

It comes after it emerged photos of staff at a Canterbury primary school had been used to create fake profiles on pornography and adult escorting websites.