Covid-19 Catch-Up Premium

Covid-19 ‘Catch up’ Premium Funding

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, meaning we are predicting St Thomas’ CE Primary School will be in receipt of £13,653.  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.

There are two broad aims for “catch up” at St Thomas’ CE Primary School:

• The mental health needs of pupils 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 end of 2019-20.

At St Thomas’ CE Primary School, this money will be used in order to provide:

• Resources and materials that support “catch up” and mental health of pupils.
• Additional support staff to develop the outcomes of children who have been identified as needing “catch up” in their learning.    

Catch Up at St Thomas’ CE Primary School is

(For all children)

• Working through well sequenced, purposeful planned learning. For example, our school-created plans are being adapted to focus on missed objectives and consolidate the basics. In Maths, we are utilising White Rose and Total Maths as the spine of learning and we have been able to use catch up premium to purchase adapted plans that have been purpose written for catch up.
• 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.
• Additional lesson time on core teaching. Reading, writing and maths teaching will require increased teaching time in order to cover missed learning – particularly in the autumn term. 
• 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.
• 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.
• School to use LEXPLORE (Year 2 -6) to assess Reading and baseline them and to use comparative data to identify dips in progress. 

 (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 the needs 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 St Thomas’ CE Primary School IS NOT:

• Cramming missed learning
• Pressuring children and families into rapid learning
• Teacher time spent highlighting missed objectives
• Teacher time spent ticking off assessment points and extra tracking