YR7 Literacy and Numeracy Catch Up Premium for 2020-2021

COVID-19 Catch up Premium Action Plan 2020-21

Strategic Plan for the Year ahead 2020‐2021 Overview and Planned expenditure and Expected outcomes

Use of COVID-19 Catch Up Funding 2020-21

“Children and young people across the country have experienced unprecedented disruption to their education as a result of coronavirus (COVID19). Those from the most vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds will be among those hardest-hit. The aggregate impact of lost time in education will be substantial, and the scale of our response must match the scale of the challenge. We know that we have the professional knowledge and expertise in the education system to ensure that children and young people recover and get back on track. 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 the 2020 to 2021 academic year to ensure that schools have the support they need to help all pupils make up for lost teaching time.” Department for Education website, 2020

COVID 19 catch-up premium funding and AST schools

The total allocation of funds to AST was just over £300,000. To ensure that we could ensure that our schools could make the most of this funding we:

• Pooled the funding across the MAT which allowed us to recruit additional staff on a twelve month, TTO (0.84) fixed term contract. Staff have been trained by school staff to deliver an effective curriculum taking into account the needs of the children with a planned catch up programme that has been informed by the latest EEF guidance and overseen and monitored by each principal.
• The AST retained a small percentage of the total funding to support the creation and implementation of ‘hardship’ fund for eligible pupils and families. To date this has provided over 100 devices for disadvantaged students and helped fund household internet connections.
• The AST Board approved this strategy at its December 2020 meeting and received an interim report on the impact of this additional funding in March 2021.

Remote education:

The DfE asks that schools meet the following key expectations:

1. Teach an ambitious and broad curriculum in all subjects from the start of the autumn term, but make use of existing flexibilities to create time to cover the most important missed content… In particular, schools may consider how all subjects can contribute to the filling of gaps in core knowledge, for example through an emphasis on reading.
2. Aim to return to the school’s normal curriculum in all subjects by summer term 2021.
3. Plan on the basis of the educational needs of pupils. Curriculum planning should be informed by an assessment of pupils’ starting points and addressing the gaps in their knowledge and skills.
4. Develop remote education so that it is integrated into school curriculum planning. Schools should set out how they will allocate the additional funding to support curriculum recovery this academic year. The EEF guidance suggests a 3-tiered approach.