Covid Catch-up Premium Plan

Covid-19 ‘Catch up’

In June 2021, the government announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up.  (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-catch-up-premium) Funding is to be divided between a catch-up premium and a national tutoring scheme. The money for the catch up premium is designed to ensure that schools have the support they need for all pupils make up for lost teaching time, and the money for the national tutoring school is designed to provide additional, targeted support for those children and young people who need the most help.

The catch-up premium is funded on a per pupil basis at £80 per pupil. The government has made it clear that the spending of this money will be down to schools to allocate as they see fit. To support schools to make the best use of this funding, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has published a support guide for schools with evidence-based approaches to catch up for all students.

There are two broad aims for 'catch up' at Stoborough CE Primary :

• The mental health needs of pupils are well 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 end of 2019-20

At Stoborough Primary, following the advice from the EEF the Covid-19 ‘Catch up’ money will be used in order to provide:

• Curriculum resources and materials that support mental health and well-being of pupils
• The purchase of curriculum resources and materials that support catch up  e.g. additional phonics resources to allow 1:1 phonics sessions
• Employment of an experienced teacher 10 hours a week to tutor small groups of children who have been identified as needing to catch up in their learning in maths.
• To fund the participation in the DfE’s Nuffield Early Language Intervention in Foundation Stage. This is an evidence based 20 week oral language intervention programme for children in their first year of primary school who may need additional support in developing their oral language skills.

Catch Up at Stoborough 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. We will continue to use our bespoke scheme of work to deliver our PSHE curriculum, alongside this additional time will be spent focusing on mental health and well-being for example taking part in our 'Nurture Through Nature' week. 
• Working through well sequenced, purposeful planning. For example, teachers have adapted planning in order to focus on key objectives that have been missed and to consolidate the basics.
• Focus on consolidation of basic skills. The core skills, which enable successful learning, will require increased curriculum time 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. Year 2 will continue with daily phonics lessons during the autumn term to ensure all children are confident with their phonic sounds.
• Assessment of learning and of basic skills to identify major gaps. Teachers will work to identify gaps in learning and adapt teaching accordingly.

 (For some children)

• Additional support and focus on basic core skills. Supported by a qualified teacher utilising catch up premium – dependent on need as identified through ongoing assessment.
• Additional time to practise 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). This additional support will be provided by TAs in the relevant key stage. 

• Additional targeted language support for Foundation children. Teachers will work to identify children who will benefit from small group and one-to-one language support. This will be delivered over a 20 week period as part of the Nuffield Early Language Intervention

• Catch up at Stoborough IS NOT:
• Cramming missed learning; the research tells us to be mindful of cognitive overload
• Pressuring children and families into rapid learning; we will use the pupils' starting points to ensure they make progress.