Covid catch up plan - 2021
Catch up program post COVID 19
Following the lockdown on March 28th due to COVID 19 the children of Coppice Primary School and Nursery had to adapt as learners and rely on home schooling, remote teacher support, and a reduced amount of face to face teaching from their class teacher. This meant that many children have gaps in their knowledge from the previous year group when they returned in September.
At Coppice Primary School and Nursery, we have planned a ‘catch-up’ premium strategy to ensure children are supported with any lost learning time and potential gaps in knowledge. This plan will focus on quality first teaching, targeted support, and wider strategies.
What is the ‘catch-up’ premium funding?
The government has announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up. This includes a one-off universal £650 million catch-up premium for 2020 to 2021 academic year to ensure that schools have the support they need to help all pupils make up for lost teaching time. Schools should use this funding for specific activities to support their pupils to catch up for lost teaching over the previous months and have the flexibility to spend their funding in the best way for their children and circumstances.
Coppice Primary School and Nursery has been allocated £17,000 additional ‘catch-up’ funding to support interventions designed to close gaps in attainment for this academic year.
How will spending decisions about interventions be made?
Since July, leaders in school have been following best practice guidance documents and approaches published by the DfE (Department for Education) and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to ensure the additional funding is directed in the most effective way (see Appendix 1). Approaches taken by the school will be driven by our detailed knowledge of children’s current attainment and will draw upon approaches that are evidence-based that are proven to have a positive impact on closing gaps.
Coppice Primary School & Nursery has taken a ‘tiered approach’ to closing gaps and raising attainment. In addition to high-quality teaching and learning interventions within the school day, Coppice Primary School and Nursery has employed additional teaching staff to take targeted children or cover the class so that the class teacher can focus upon those in need. Evidence (EEF) shows that ‘Tutors that have qualified teacher status are likely to have the most impact’.
The catch-up programme will link closely to the school improvement plans and Pupil Premium Strategy. Leaders must be able to account for how money is being used to achieve the goal of ‘catch-up’ Lesson plans will evaluate learning and identify gaps; assessment will be used regularly to assess progress against targets.
Quality First Teaching
The curriculum will be adapted to focus on the key skills and knowledge that children need in order to access the wider curriculum. Teachers will focus on embedding these key facts in the first two terms for all core subjects whilst still teaching a smaller percentage of non-core subjects. This will be picked up in the summer term. All teaching will take into account the children’s ability on return from Lockdown (Summer 2020, Autumn 2020, Spring 2 2021) and planning will be tailored to their needs. The first 10 days of the term will concentrate on wellbeing and sharing the plans for the term. The third week will see the completion of a range of formal and informal tests to support the teachers planning. The teaching will be monitored by the SLT each half term to ensure high quality of teaching across the school.
Focused in-class support for specific year groups
During Autumn Terms, all Year groups will receive specific targeted supported within the school day by their class teacher focusing on a range of different skills and knowledge.
There will be a Teaching Assistant every morning in each class bubble to support the children at most risk of falling behind or further behind. These children will be planned for by the teacher and then work with the support of the TA in the class to allow for smaller ratios and more targeted intervention. Interventions records will be kept which will allow for each child below expectations will have a detailed provision map in place. These can be found in the SEN folder for each class. These interventions will be monitored half termly by the SLT.
Targeted Group Support
This is an area where we are investing the school’s catch up grant as we strongly believe it will have the most impact. We will select children at most risk of falling behind to partake in small group targeted intervention which will begin in January 2021. These sessions will be run by a qualified teacher, an HLTA or a Teaching Assistant. The accountability for the success of these sessions will lie with them and the class teacher in order to have the most impact. The sessions will be fast paced and initially work on lost learning from the prior year group in order to give children the best possible chance of progressing in their current year group.
The teacher undertaking this role will liaise with class teacher and SLT and will take responsibility for tracking the progress of those children present
Health, Fitness and Wellbeing
We have planned for all our after-school activities to take place in class bubbles. We believe that the pace of school life needs to be slower in order to support our children in embedding key skills and knowledge to become good learners and in turn widen their curriculum knowledge. We also believe that with this approach these children won’t have suffered during the lockdown period but will have actually grown in many ways and have more determination to succeed in all that they do reaching their full potential. We have worked closely on our Lunchtime provision in order to get all children more active. Throughout Lockdown many of the children have been confined within their homes with little or no exercise. It is important that they are able to see the benefits of exercise therefore ‘Liven up your Lunch’ sessions have been planned with areas of the playground zoned and Key Stage bubbles supported to take part. Additional lunchtime staff have been employed to support the leading of this.
Who will benefit from the funding?
During September 2020 and January 2021, all children across the school have undertaken high-quality assessments in reading, writing, phonics / spelling and maths. Through careful analysis of this assessment data, teachers have identified groups of children that will benefit from ‘catch-up’ support or other interventions to enable them to close gaps in understanding and attainment. Our Spring 2 assessments have been useful in giving us a further baseline to use. We also acknowledge that staff are highly skilled at on-going observations and assessment of individual needs. Due to the changing needs of groups and individuals during the Covid pandemic we regularly change our targeted support. Having strong relationships with our parents and carers has enabled us to provide the right support as soon as the children are back in school and in some cases whilst learning at home.