Graduate warns of having been placed in an “unsafe situation” by being asked to teach lessons without training at controversial academy

A graduate who was hired to take her first steps in the profession at a controversial academy has told this website how she was thrown in to teaching classes in her second week, without what she said was even the most basic of training.

Lucy*, who was taken on as a “teaching fellow” by the Astrea trust at Longsands Academy in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, said she felt that she and her pupils had been placed in an “unsafe situation” by having to take two year nine classes in February, without any preparation.

She said that within months, she was having to become a class tutor to a year 10 group, and also to take eight key stage three classes, in a core subject, again with very little training.

She also said that a lesson she took during the school’s Ofsted inspection back in February had been “probably the quietest I ever delivered,” because of the presence of a number of senior leaders in her classroom, who would not normally be there.

Lucy, who resigned four months into her post and left the school in August, is one of a number of former Longsands staff members who have been in touch with this website in recent months, wanting goings-on at the school under Astrea to be subject to public discussion.