'Catch Up' Funding Strategy
Rationale:
The government is provided funding to all schools to cover a one-off universal catch-up premium for the 2020 to 2021 academic year. It aims to support pupils to catch up for lost learning so schools can meet the curriculum expectations for the next academic year. Marsh Gibbon CE School will receive a total of £80 per pupil in 3 instalments - in autumn 2020, 'early 2021' and summer 2021. The money will be spent to ensure that pupils, who have significant gaps in their knowledge or skills, will be able to close gaps in their learning.
Our staff, through baseline assessments as well as observations of pupils, have now identified children who will benefit the most from an additional ‘catch –up’ programme. We have used the COVID-19 Support Guide for Schools published by Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to identify the best strategies, based on long term research that will enable our pupils to achieve the most positive outcomes.
Currently the school considers a ‘Three –Tier Approach’ to our recovery curriculum planning and any ‘Catch-Up’ interventions: teaching, targeted academic support and wider strategies.
Teaching
High-quality teaching for all
Examples:
Effective Diagnostic Assessment
Supporting Remote Learning
Targeted Academic Support
High quality one to one and small group tuition
Teaching Assistants
Wider Strategies
Supporting pupils’ social, emotional and behavioural needs
Our school will continue to ensure that communicating with and supporting parents during these very challenging times will also remain one of our priorities. This is crucial to ensuring that pupils are supported to learn and that parents are able to provide this support without the expectation that they fulfil the role of teacher.
When devising our ‘Catch-Up’ programme, we considered the following points:
The government is provided funding to all schools to cover a one-off universal catch-up premium for the 2020 to 2021 academic year. It aims to support pupils to catch up for lost learning so schools can meet the curriculum expectations for the next academic year. Marsh Gibbon CE School will receive a total of £80 per pupil in 3 instalments - in autumn 2020, 'early 2021' and summer 2021. The money will be spent to ensure that pupils, who have significant gaps in their knowledge or skills, will be able to close gaps in their learning.
Our staff, through baseline assessments as well as observations of pupils, have now identified children who will benefit the most from an additional ‘catch –up’ programme. We have used the COVID-19 Support Guide for Schools published by Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to identify the best strategies, based on long term research that will enable our pupils to achieve the most positive outcomes.
Currently the school considers a ‘Three –Tier Approach’ to our recovery curriculum planning and any ‘Catch-Up’ interventions: teaching, targeted academic support and wider strategies.
Teaching
High-quality teaching for all
- The most important factor in improving outcomes for pupils.
- Explicit instructions, scaffolding, flexible groupings, cognitive strategies as well as metacognitive strategies.
- Deep subject knowledge.
Examples:
- A teacher might teach a pupil a strategy for summarising a paragraph by breaking up the strategy into small steps. The teacher would model this process to the pupil. The teacher would then give the pupil the opportunity to practise this skill.
- Scaffolding’ is a metaphor for temporary support that is removed when it is no longer required (visual, verbal or written)
- Cognitive strategies are skills like memorisation techniques or subject-specific strategies like methods to solve problems in maths.
- Metacognitive strategies - checking whether our approach to solving a mathematics problem worked or considering which cognitive strategy is the best fit for a task
- Flexible grouping describes when pupils are allocated to smaller groups based on the individual needs that they currently share with other pupils.
Effective Diagnostic Assessment
- Assessment to help identify gaps and ascertain what learning has been remembered or forgotten.
- What learning has been lost or misunderstood?
- What new knowledge and experiences have been gained?
- What is the right balance between standardised assessments and classroom-based diagnostic assessments?
- Assessments as diagnostic tools.
- Importance of differentiating between learning that has been forgotten due to extended absence from the classroom and material that hasn’t been learnt properly.
Supporting Remote Learning
- Our Remote Learning Policy and Contingency Plan is available on our website.
Targeted Academic Support
High quality one to one and small group tuition
- The evidence indicates that small group and one to one interventions can be a powerful tool for supporting pupils.
- Structured, targeted interventions to make progress.
- These interventions will be carefully targeted through identification and assessment of need.
- Sessions are brief (15-45 mins), occur regularly (e.g. 3-5 times per week) and are maintained over a sustained period of time.
- Assessments are used to identify appropriate pupils and progress is tracked.
- Connections are made between the out-of-class learning in the interventions and classroom teaching.
Teaching Assistants
- The use of teaching assistants to deliver high quality interventions, which complement the work of the teacher, is a powerful way of mitigating any impacts of time away from school.
- The school will use structured and evidence-based programmes for interventions.
- Where possible and practical, the school will use qualified teachers to support pupils during small group interventions.
- We will ensure that learning during interventions is consistent with, and extends, work inside the classroom and that pupils understand the links between the two.
Wider Strategies
Supporting pupils’ social, emotional and behavioural needs
- A large and often unrecognised part of teachers’ work has always involved providing support for pupils’ social, emotional and behavioural needs. This will continue throughout this academic year and beyond.
- We will continue sustained focus on supporting and monitoring pupils’ social, emotional and behavioural needs.
Our school will continue to ensure that communicating with and supporting parents during these very challenging times will also remain one of our priorities. This is crucial to ensuring that pupils are supported to learn and that parents are able to provide this support without the expectation that they fulfil the role of teacher.
When devising our ‘Catch-Up’ programme, we considered the following points:
- ‘Catch-Up’ programmes will be time-limited, with fluid targets. They are designed to fill the gaps quickly so children can begin to have the same access to the age appropriate curriculum as soon as possible.
- Programmes will focus on the key knowledge and concepts and filling specific ‘gaps.’
- Staff delivering ‘catch-up’ programmes will be either a qualified teacher or experienced LSA
- Staff will be working with either small groups or on a 1:1 basis
- Pupils and staff will be kept in their respective ‘bubbles.’