Covid-19 ‘Catch up’

In June, the government announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up.  Further guidance has now been released (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-catch-up-premium) showing that the money is to be split 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. It is not expected, however, that there will be a spend of £80 on each and every pupil in schools. The government has made it clear that the spending of this money will be down to schools to allocate as they see fit.

There are two broad aims for “catch up” at St Joseph’s Catholic 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 St Joseph’s Catholic 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” 
• the purchase of additional ICT to improve access for children to online learning and support
• additional training and time to further develop the quality of teaching for all staff including Learning Partners
• the engagement of sports coaches to promote team work and physical activity (wellbeing)

Catch Up at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary 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 employ our Wellbeing Learning Partner to support the wellbeing of all children.  We will continue to focus on and develop the RSHE curriculum to the highest standard.
• Continue to assess and adapt. Teachers have provided excellent assessment and feedback of children’s learning during lockdown.  This high quality assessment will continue and any issues addressed.
• 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.

 (For some children)

• Additional targeted support. 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).  Progress of intervention groups will be assessed and learning adapted.  This additional support will be provided by identified Learning Partners.

• 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 by the S&L Learning Partner.

Catch up at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary  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