Covid Catch-Up Funding at SSIS
DfE guidance - Coronavirus (COVID-19) Catch-Up Premium
‘Schools should use this funding for specific activities to support their pupils to catch up for lost teaching over the previous months, in line with the guidance on curriculum expectations for the next academic year. As with all government funding, school leaders must be able to account for how this money is being used to achieve our central goal of schools getting back on track and teaching a normal curriculum as quickly as possible. Given their role in ensuring schools spend funding appropriately and in holding schools to account for educational performance, governors and trustees should scrutinise schools’ approaches to catch-up from September, including their plans for and use of catch-up funding. This should include consideration of whether schools are spending this funding in line with their catch-up priorities and ensuring appropriate transparency for parents.’
The catch-up premium is funded on a per pupil basis at £80 per pupil and is based on the number of children at the school when the previous year’s census took place.
St Stephen’s Infant School (SSIS) has been allocated £20,960 in Catch-Up funding. We received the first payment of £5,240 in October 2020.
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.
Please scroll down for more information................
At SSIS the funding will be used to provide:
- Curriculum resources and materials that support “catch up” and mental health of pupils – including supporting access to high quality remote learning/platforms.
- Additional staff time to develop the outcomes of children who have been identified as needing “catch up” in their learning.
Catch-up at SSIS for all children:
- Focus on consolidation of basic skills. The core skills which enable successful learning will require increased curriculum time across all year groups. These include: speaking & listening, handwriting, spelling of high frequency words, basic sentence punctuation, 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.
- Access a high quality remote learning offer. Ensure any child who is unable to attend school (due to Covid-related reasons) can access a range of online learning platforms to support their home learning.
- 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 not have been in formal school setting for a number of months. We recognise that children having to isolate may need further support upon their return to school.
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 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) and there will be flexibility on timetables to allow this.
As the catch-up premium has been designed to mitigate the effects of the unique disruption caused by coronavirus (COVID-19), the grant will only be available for the 2020 to 2021 academic year. Further guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-catch-up-premium