In June, a £1 billion fund for education was announced by the government. Further guidance has now been released (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-catch-up-premium) showing that the money is split between a catch-up premium and a national tutoring scheme.
The catch-up premium is funded on a per pupil basis at £80 per pupil. This will be based on the previous year’s census and will not include Nursery numbers. In the Autumn 20 and Spring 21 Term will be in receipt of £17,725. The spending of this money will be down to schools to allocate as they see best. To support schools to make the best use of this funding, the Education Endowment Foundation has published a support guide for schools with evidence-based approaches to catch up for all students.
Spending:
At The Glebe Primary School, this money will be used in order to:
• Purchase curriculum resources and materials that support pupils to make accelerated learning and fund staff to deliver this.
• Fund additional support staff to develop the outcomes of children who have been identified as needing “catch up” in their learning.
• Pay the top up fee to access the subsidised national tutoring programme for disadvantaged pupils and others who are identified as needing “catch up” in their learning.
• Following the latest school closure we will be reassessing our spending to ensure it meets the children’s needs.
Aims
The broad aims for “catch up” at The Glebe:
• The mental health needs of pupils that have arisen as a result of the pandemic are met and supported by the school.
• Attainment outcomes at end of 2020-21 for all year groups will be at least in line with those at the point of lockdown in March. This means that if a child was working at an age-related expectation in a subject in March they are working at least to an age-related expectation in that same subject by the end of the year.
• By the end of the 2021-22 year, attainment outcomes for all year groups will be at least in line with those at the end of the 2019-20 year.
Catch Up at The Glebe is
(For all children)
• Time spent on mental health, wellbeing and social skills development. This will be at the core of all catch up work as many children will have not been in formal school setting for a number of months.
• Working through well sequenced, purposeful learning schemes. For example, our school-created writing schemes are being adapted to focus on missed objectives and consolidate the basics. In maths, we will utilise the Power Maths Scheme as our spine of learning, with White Rose materials used to support home learning and catch up.
• Focus on consolidation of basic skills. The core skills which enable successful learning will require increased curriculum focus across all year groups. These include: handwriting, spelling of high frequency words, basic sentence punctuation, times tables recall, basic addition & subtraction fact recall and reading skills relevant to age.
• Particular focus on early reading and phonics. This is always a focus in the school and will continue to be so in order to develop children’s reading ability and vocabulary.
• Assessment of learning and of basic skills to identify major gaps. Teachers will work to identify gaps in learning and adapt teaching accordingly.
• Opportunities for physical activity and development. Teachers will ensure that children have opportunities to be active within lessons, in PE time and unstructured times of the school day. Many of our children have not participated in as much physical activity as normal.
(For some children)
• Additional support and focus on basic core skills. Supported by additional staffing utilising catch up premium – dependent on need as identified through ongoing assessment.
• Additional time to practice basic skills. This again will be dependent on need of children in order to re-establish good progress in the essentials (phonics and reading, increasing vocabulary, writing and mathematics) and there will be flexibility on timetables to allow this.
Catch up at The Glebe is not
• Cramming missed learning
• Pressuring children and families into rapid learning
• Teachers time spent highlighting missed objectives
• Teachers time spent ticking off assessment points and extra tracking
