Catchup Funding

Catch Up Premium

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, meaning we are predicting that school will be in receipt of £16,880 (211 x £80).  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.

At Rift House Primary School, this money will be used in order to support:

Catch up priorities: Implement a 15-week initial curriculum cycle and follow this up with a 19-week cycle reactive to government advise with Covid safety with quality first teaching; formative assessment; continuous planning and evaluation; and staff CPD, support and communication at its heart to achieve the ambitious target of ensuring children catch up with the previous year’s curriculum by the end of the autumn term.

Measuring impact: Place emphasis through CPD on the different waves of intervention and measure its impact through rich formative leading to summative assessment at the end of the autumn term.

Catch up strategies:

Other strategies:

Teaching

• Deliberately reduce workload (e.g. reduced meetings) during the assessment cycle to aid staff wellbeing and enable high-quality responsive teaching.
• Target teaching to fill in children’s specific gaps, focusing on key knowledge and facts, making use of the school’s existing non-negotiables for core learning documentation.
• Ensure children experience early success and through structured activities and through our school’s ethos ensure children are ‘Ready to Learn’.

Targeted Academic Support

• Early identification of children with widest gaps in knowledge from their previous starting points through transition meetings, low stakes assessments on return to school and through collaborating with SENDCO, safeguarding team and SLT to establish a ‘whole picture’ of the child.
• Make use of both tailor made and reactive intervention to secure rapid progress, as well as accessing one to one tuition for targeted disadvantaged children and allowing children access to the wellbeing team.
• Catch up to take place in the classroom focusing on key knowledge and concepts – with support and teaching staff working closely together.
• Provision mapping support

Wider Strategies

• Pre-planned accessible home learning (individual and bubble isolation) for reinforcement so that those absent have timely access to quality resources and do not fall further behind in learning (use of See Saw and Teams).
• School staff to cover absences who already have established relationships with children and have been involved in prior learning – easy to follow reinforcement guides planned in advance by class teacher to be used.
• Ongoing ICT support for all staff, children and parents.
• 6 ways to communicate for parents implemented
• All staff involved in risk assessments and delegated responsibilities of staff who form the ‘Covid Team’
• Daily/bi-weekly/weekly phone-calls/distanced visits support families in isolation and may include delivery of food parcels and/or resources for children.