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.

Longsands operates a centralised set of rules on pupil behaviour and classroom management set by Astrea’s headquarters. The trust has said these have been influenced by the Teach Like a Champion textbook series and Tom Bennett, the Department for Education’s adviser on school behaviour. But it has suffered from an exodus of experienced staff over the past 18 months, including just before Lucy began teaching at Longsands.

The detail

Lucy, who attended the school herself back in the 2010s, had returned to Longsands in January this year to take up a position which she said offered graduates the chance to try out teaching before going on to study for a Post Graduate Certificate in Education, or enter a teaching placement scheme such as Teach First.

She said the first week had been as she had expected. She said: “I was hired as a teaching fellow, which was meant to bridge the gap between graduating and starting your teacher training. The plan was that for a term or two I would shadow [teachers], co-teach, serve as a teaching assistant…I started and my first week was as advertised. I would sit in on humanities classes, there was a bit of shadowing TAs, things like that.”

However, this then immediately changed. She said: “In my second week, I got put on the cover sheet for two English year nine classes.”

This meant she had to teach the classes without any training, she said, in behaviour management, or even in how to use the information system, called Bromcom, which schools such as Longsands rely on to access details about student needs, to communicate with management and to take the register.

She said: “In the first class, at this point I hadn’t had any behaviour management training, I didn’t know how the system, Bromcom, worked, I had only kind of completed a few training modules online, like health and safety, I hadn’t completed my Prevent training.

“So basically I’d had no training, and yet I’d been put into two year 9 classes. In the first one, I was told that a member of SLT [the senior leadership team] would be there to help. She was there for about 15 minutes, and then left. I did the two classes, it was chaotic, and I went to the head of department and said ‘I don’t think this is right. I think it’s putting the students in an unsafe situation; it’s putting me in an unsafe situation’.”

She said, though, that progress on improving her training was limited.

She said: “I got the unions involved. I had a meeting with the principal, who said that she would set up a meeting with the head of behaviour management in the school. I asked to be taught how to use Bromcom… because I haven’t been taught how to do that. I asked for TLAC [Teach Like a Champion] training, which feels like one of their main values. None of this happened.”

She continued: “Then I was given a year 10 tutor group at Easter. I had been shadowing this tutor group to see what tutor time was like, but then they were entirely given to me at Easter.

“[I had to do] school line-ups, morning registration, afternoon registration, pastoral support if [a pupil] had been sanctioned, I had to action that. Year 10 they were doing their mocks, so I had to take them to their mock exams, so it was quite a big commitment for having zero training whatsoever.

“I raised concerns to a lot of members of SLT and my head of dept specifically, the principal, I kept the union involved. Not much happened, apart from I felt that the environment became more hostile, I had a comment from the head of department that she said I didn’t understand what I had done, in getting the union involved. It was quite an odd atmosphere.”

But Lucy’s teaching load then got much heavier.

She said: “There was another teaching fellow, who was about to start her teacher training in September. Her and I were told that we were absorbing key stage 3 classes as permanent cover… So just after Easter I had eight key stage 3 classes, where I was either their full-time teacher or I was sharing them with other English teachers, [so in these cases] I had them one to two times a week.”

I asked Lucy what training she had had, by this point.

She said: “In the first week of summer term, I received some TLAC training, because there were quite a few new starters in the department, so the head of department requested that we had TLAC training. I attended CPD [continuing professional development] each week off my own back, [but] I never received any formal behaviour management training. I requested that the second in command and the head of department sat in on any lessons that they could, so they could tell me afterwards how to improve. I think this happened once.”

Despite Astrea’s heavy emphasis on behaviour management – it operates a highly codified system meant to ensure high standards – Lucy said the reality had been that incidents were not always dealt with effectively.

She said: “I had quite a few incidents of behaviour of the students where I had to report it further. I reported it to the vice-principal, the head of department and the principal, and I heard nothing back. I had quite a few sexist remarks from students, and I put in an email and said what had happened. They weren’t sanctioned, they were back in circulation the next day. So things like that weren’t followed up.”

Lucy has a health condition which she said usually requires some time in hospital every year. She felt the school did not handle this well, with no contingency plan put in place for when it did happen, in the summer term. She said she was frustrated about that.

She added: “There was quite a bit of resentment towards colleagues that had to be off. But it was obviously because leadership was under so much stress because they were so short-staffed and they were then having to give classes to people like me and the other teaching fellow…It was really not a very nice environment.

“There was a lot of speaking down to members of staff. It was quite a toxic environment to be in.”

So she handed in her resignation in May. This meant that she would leave Longsands at the end of the term.

She continued: “After that, nothing really changed, I remained having the number of classes that I had, [the students] were obviously entering their end-of-year exams. I voiced concern to quite a few members of staff, saying I’m really worried that my classes, who have had me since [the turn of the year] are now entering end-of-year exams. I could see that they were going to be at a disadvantage to other classes, because I had been teaching curriculum and doing the best that I can, but they won’t have had a good, stable teacher. They had gone from a teacher to me, who isn’t even trained.”

Lucy has a degree and master’s in her subject. Although she said her degree was “somewhat transferrable” to the subject she was teaching, this is not the subject she studied at university.

She said: “I was also on the cover sheet just constantly as well, so could be taken at any point for cover [covering for teacher colleagues when they were absent]. PPAs [planning, preparation and assessment time, which is written in to teachers’ contracts] weren’t ever guaranteed: blocked out period where you couldn’t be taken for cover. I was taken for cover when I was on PPA.”

I suggested to Lucy that, with teacher shortages now serious in many schools, they were often having to be flexible with staff deployment.

She responded: “I completely agree about flexibility. I would be completely fine with it, had I been given even the slightest bit of support from the school itself…My issue is that ultimately the students in those classes were not safe, because I had not had the training that was necessary. If something had gone wrong and it was the period of time that I didn’t even know how to use Bromcom, I wouldn’t have been able to raise an alert [by alerting a senior member of staff], I didn’t have for quite a few terms the health plans for students, so I didn’t know who might need extra support, things like that.

“My concern was just ultimately the wellbeing of the education the students were getting. Because I was very much just a function of the need to have a person in the classroom, to make sure that that classroom was filled.”

She said she was “not the only case” of under-trained staff being put in front of pupils. She said: “I think there were three teaching fellows in humanities. And most of the department was being taught by long-term cover. I understand that there’s going to be teachers with prolonged absence, but I don’t think it’s the education that they deserve, ultimately.

“From my knowledge, in the December there were a lot of teachers who resigned [reported on by Education Uncovered here]. So there was a scramble to fill those departments that had not hired enough early career teachers, or qualified teachers, so they were looking to cover agencies for long-term cover. Then people like myself and other teaching fellows.

“Then, into summer term, a lot of people left as well, because they were unhappy with the environment, the climate and the attitude of leadership, but also, from the people I spoke to, with the quality of education that the current students were getting.”

I asked how the other teachers felt about this. Lucy said: “I spoke to a few members of the department who had been there for about 15 years…they were very conflicted, between staying and doing their best to remedy what they could for the students that were there, and putting themselves first and thinking this is not a place that I want to be in any more.”

Detail on why she felt “unsafe”

I also asked Lucy for more information as to why she felt unsafe. She started out by explaining some more how Bromcom works.

She said: “It’s a system that all the teachers use. It has student information on it, and you could raise an alert so that one of the members of SLT who was doing the behaviour walk would come to your classroom, remove students if need be, and it had information on the students with special educational needs, any students who perhaps had worse behaviour, it would detail what contingency plans were needed for these students. Just that basic information: it controlled everything.

“So being put in a class with no-one explaining what Bromcom was, not knowing how to take the register, it sounds like really basic stuff. I felt as though, because I did not have access to this information, and was not able to do something so basic, if something were to happen with the students, I was completely on my own.”

She added: “Quite a few of the first cover lessons I did were in a classroom in the music block, which didn’t have many classrooms near it. So I felt that was creating an unsafe environment for myself and the students. If you have an untrained member of staff, they should be in an environment that has the capacity to be supported.

“In the English department, so many classrooms are near, everyone has their door open. If something were to happen, you’ve got three other classes in your vicinity. But that often wasn’t the case for me.”

She continued: “It was stressful, but I got to the point where I felt like I had done absolutely everything that I can in this situation. There was behaviour management that was out of my control, content learning that was out of my control, and I felt so defeated after that first lesson. Because the two classes that I had to do permanent cover were ones that had poor behaviour. They were really tricky year nine classes. And so I kind of had that feeling of I don’t know what I can feasibly do. That first lesson was an awful lesson. It was really awful. And I immediately I went to my head of department afterwards, and just said these students are not going to get a good calibre of learning, because I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m not supported.”

How did it compare with her experience as a pupil?

I also asked Lucy how her experience at Longsands under Astrea had compared to the education she had received in the 2010s, before the trust’s arrival.

She said: “In my opinion, it’s a completely different school.”

She conceded that as an adult, she would have knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes in a way that pupils were not, for example “what pressure leadership is putting on teachers”.

But she added that she was still able to make a fair comparison of the learning environment.

She said that, as a pupil, “it was just such a warm, safe environment that was kind of the main driving force that made me think it would be a good place to do my teacher training.

“And I was just shocked at not just the environment in itself, but the lack of structure, and the lack of passion, which I think is a direct response from the pressure that leadership are putting on teachers.

“Because when I was a student, the thing that engaged me so much was how much my teachers adored working there, adored their jobs, adored educating, and that’s what really resonated with me. I don’t think that’s what I saw when I went back.

“It kind of felt like the teachers who I saw who were the ones who left in the summer, because they just didn’t agree with Astrea’s values and approach. And it felt like they didn’t have the freedom to teach in a way that they felt beneficial for their students, because it didn’t conform with the structure of Astrea values, and things like that.”

This website has heard several sources, including parents and former staff, paying tribute to the longstanding quality of teaching in the school.

Wider context: this former teacher is not alone

Lucy is far from alone in having voiced concern about goings-on at Longsands. In December, Education Uncovered revealed that the school lost at least nine teachers – or eight per cent of its teaching staff – at Christmas.

One of them warned that Astrea’s focus on behavioural “compliance” – an apparently uncompromising emphasis on pupil discipline and uniform – ran the risk of making students vulnerable to mistreatment in their adult lives, as they would sometimes need to raise questions about decision-making, but this was approach discouraged by the trust’s focus on pupils having to follow instructions “first time every time”.

It is clear that teachers leaving the school had impacts on children’s learning. In January, BBC local radio quoted a parent stating that her child had had 20 supply teachers in one subject during a year.  

Also in January, Education Uncovered reported on pupils facing class sizes of up to 90 because of staff shortages.

In March, I reported on Catherine Cusick, Longsands’ principal, stating that she was “very concerned” about a staff survey, carried out in the autumn term last year, which had shown “an overall decline in staff satisfaction in all categories” compared to the previous year.

In July, National Education Union members at Longsands went on strike. In an ITV local news report on this, Peter Jeffery, an English teacher, made comments again appearing to underline frustrations with Astrea’s centralised approach, within at least a proportion of the workforce. He said: “The school has been a very difficult place to work in the last, I would say, over a year. Essentially, a kind of culture where you don’t really feel free to teach in the way that you want to teach. You don’t really feel free to deal with the students in the way that you want to deal with the students.”

Sam Blake, a physics teacher, told the broadcaster: “I think the words that have been used by members are culture of fear, a kind of toxic culture, and I think that applies to both staff and students, within the school. There’s a lot of instances of real failure of management to listen to the concerns or the needs of staff and students.”

Last month, ex- Longsands governor Dawn Milne issued a scathing critique of Astrea’s approach to behaviour, governing body dissent and staff management:

Ofsted findings, and Lucy’s experience of the inspection

Given the above, and Lucy’s detailed concerns around the impact of teacher shortages and what this meant in terms of both safety and the quality of teaching she felt able to deliver, Ofsted’s rating of Longsands as “good” may come under fresh scrutiny.

As Education Uncovered reported, Ofsted upgraded Longsands from “requires improvement” in its previous inspection to “good” following an inspection in February, despite nearly half of surveyed staff saying it had got worse, and nearly a third of responding pupils saying they rarely felt safe.

Nearly nine out of 10 parents responding to Ofsted’s survey had said they would not recommend the school to others.

The inspection report offered little, in terms of direct comment, about the impact of staff shortages on the quality of pupils’ education. And what it did say seemed to conflict with the detailed account provided by Lucy above.

In relation to teacher turnover, the Ofsted report said only: “In a few subjects, teaching has not been as consistently effective [as in other unnamed subjects, where it praised teachers]. This is because of temporary staffing arrangements or where teachers have needed to develop their practice further. Where this has been the case, leaders have acted to provide support and training. This has improved the quality of education provided and contributed to pupils achieving well overall.”

Again, this seems to conflict directly with Lucy’s account.

Astrea had also flooded Longsands with 25 extra staff during the inspection, including senior management, it admitted following a Freedom of Information request.

The extra employees had been brought in from the chain’s head office in Sheffield, as well as from other schools within the trust.

Lucy offered an insight into the preparation that went into the inspection, and also the impact of those extra staff in her own classroom.

She said: “There was this email that went round [when the Ofsted inspection had been announced] saying that if you haven’t completed training, you must do it. It was basic health and safety training. If you are in a school, that must be at the forefront of your thinking, surely. The school should be getting people to complete this as soon as they start work, not just for Ofsted. So the best way I can describe for what happened when the Ofsted announcement came was a scramble [to get ready for it]. It was so disorganised.”

She added that the extra staff had meant that the Ofsted inspection had not been “a true reflection of the school”.

She said: “I was teaching a lesson when the Ofsted inspectors were coming round, but I had two or three members of SLT in my class to make sure that the students were being silent, just because the Ofsted inspector was in the corridor. That was probably the quietest lesson I ever delivered, because of the presence of those two or three members of SLT.”

In the event, the inspector had not visited her lesson, she said, because the school had been told that those of cover supervisors and trainee teachers would not be visited, although inspectors had actually seen one of the other teaching fellows teach.

Despite Lucy’s comments about not feeling safe in her initial lessons, the Ofsted report did not issue any warnings on pupil safety, with safeguarding found to be effective. Leadership and management, alongside the quality of education, pupils’ personal development and the sixth form provision, were all found by inspectors to be “good”.

I asked Lucy if she felt the Ofsted inspection report was a fair reflection of the school.

She said: “Personally, I don’t think it’s an accurate representation of the school. I think that the report is correct in rating quality of education as good – before the end of last summer term there were some phenomenal teachers at the school who had been there for 10+ years…

“[But] from human resources/operations conducting a massive sweep…of staff who hadn’t completed basic health and safety training days before the Ofsted visit, to people like myself receiving less training than a cover supervisor would have before setting foot in a classroom, I do not think the school consistently and conscientiously puts student safety over convenience.”

As for Lucy’s future, she said she would no longer be going into teaching, as had been the plan. Her experience at Longsands, which had “knocked back my confidence” was a part of that, although also a factor was her health condition: she worried about periods in hospital taking her away from her students.

Astrea no longer seems to be responding to my requests for comment: I put detail to it following Dawn Milne’s comments last month, but there was no answer.

I will update this piece if the trust follows up on it with any response.

*”Lucy” is a pseudonym.