Covid-19 ‘Catch up’

In June, the government announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up.  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.

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 Field Place will be in receipt of £7,258.75 (90 x £80).  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. To support schools to make the best use of this funding, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) 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 Orchards Infant School:

• The mental health needs of pupils are well met and supported by the school.

At Field Place, 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” e.g. additional phonics resources to allow 1:1 phonics “catch up” to take place

Catch Up at Field Place 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. Alongside delivering our PSCHE curriculum, additional time will be spent focusing on mental health and well-being.

• Working through well sequenced, purposeful planning. For example, teachers have adapted planning in order to focus on missed objectives and to consolidate the basics.

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, 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. From reception to Year 2 we will continue with the RWI daily phonics lessons  throughout the year to ensure all children are confident with their phonic sounds and applying these when reading.
• Assessment of learning and of basic skills to identify major gaps. Teachers will work to identify gaps in learning and adapt teaching accordingly.

 (For some children)

• Additional support and focus on basic core skills. Each class has a full-time LSA allowing teachers to provide bespoke reading, writing and maths catch either delivered by themselves or the LSA.

• 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). This additional support will be provided by; class LSAs directed Ms Bourne (PP Lead).
• 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 using the NELLI Language Intervention.

Catch up at Field Place 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