Learning and Living Together

Catch-up Strategy Plan November 2020

 

 

 

 

Catch up program post COVID 19

Following the lockdown on March 28th due to COVID 19 the children of Cale Green Primary School 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 inevitably meant that many children have gaps in their knowledge from the previous year group when they returned in September. 

At Cale Green, we have constructed a ‘catch-up’ plan to ensure children catch up on any lost learning time and potential gaps in knowledge. This plan will focus on quality first teaching, empowering our team of tutors by providing high quality training, specific year group ‘gap’ filling, classroom intervention and small group targeted support with the child’s health and well-being at the centre of all we do. 

In addition, we know that the Educational Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) Teaching and Learning Toolkit ranks strategies by the “extra months” of pupil progress they secure and topping their chart is metacognition, which has “consistently high levels of impact, with pupils making an average of eight months’ additional progress” each year.

What is metacognition?

Metacognition is not simply “thinking about thinking”, it is much more complex than this. Metacognition is actively monitoring one’s own learning and, based on this monitoring, making changes to one’s own learning behaviours and strategies. We know that the teacher is integral to the development of younger pupils’ metacognitive skills which is one of the main reasons for including metacognition on our School Improvement Plan using the Lesson Study tool as the vehicle to role this out as a whole school initiative. We see this running alongside the catch-up programme.

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 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. 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.

Cale Green has been allocated £23,000+ 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.

Cale Green takes a ‘tiered approach’ to closing gaps and raising attainment (see Appendix 2). In addition to high-quality teaching and learning interventions within the school day, Cale Green has partnered with a National Mentoring organisation (TeachFirst) and employed graduate teachers to support our outstanding staff team deliver high-quality tutoring beyond the school day from November 2020. Evidence (EEF) shows that ‘Tutors that have qualified teacher status are likely to have the most impact’.

During October 2020, Governors in school scrutinised the ‘catch-up’ premium strategy to ensure all strategies chosen will have a positive impact on children’s attainment. 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 the summer term 2020 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 November and December, Year 2 and Year 6 will receive specific targeted supported within the school day by their class teacher focusing on a range of different skills and knowledge.

Classroom intervention

There will be a Teaching Assistant 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 and each child below expectations will have a detailed provision map in place. These can be found in the Record of Monitoring for each class. These interventions will be monitored half termly by the SLT.

Targeted Group Support (tutoring)

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. This will follow a period of time during Autumn 2 which will see specific training for these targeted interventions. These sessions will be run by a qualified teacher, who may be acting as 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 children selected will enter a contract alongside their parents to ensure all stakeholders sign up to the commitment of this additional focused teaching. As this is an investment in the child selected, this will be closely monitored by SLT and any lack of engagement from parents may result in the place being offered to another child. The teacher undertaking this role will liaise with class teacher and SLT and will present impact to HT and Chair of Governors on a termly basis.

Targeted Group Support (mentoring )

This will run from January 2021. Further details to follow.

Health, Fitness and Wellbeing

We have planned for all our wrap-around clubs 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.

Who will benefit from the funding?

During September 2020, 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. Strategy aims for disadvantaged pupils

 

 

 

Pupils in school

333 

Proportion of disadvantaged pupils

87pupils (25%) 77 Current FSM

Catch-up premium allocation this academic year

£24,000  ‘ESTIMATED’

Academic year or years covered by statement

2020-21

Publish date

20.9.20

reviewed 3.11.20

Review date

September 2021

Statement authorised by

David Marshall

Catch-up premium lead

Sarah McHugh / Nicola Lewis

Governor lead

Russ Bowler / Sue Dunkley

Strategy aims for disadvantaged pupils

Intervention / Approach

Cost of intervention / Approach

Rationale

Ensure Home Learning is immediately accessible  for those isolating following positive case in bubble.

Purchase 30 kindles

 

£1800

 

Purchased for children who have no access / shared access with siblings to a device at home to ensure remote learning is accessible for all. This will supplement additional devices obtained through DfE ‘Wave 2’ scheme through local authority.

The school has undertaken research and worked closely with all families to determine those children most in need.

Will allow tutoring sessions to continue in the event of children isolating in bubbles / individuals.

Ensure Home Learning is immediately accessible  for those isolating following positive case in bubble.

Purchase booklets for home learning Y1 – 6

1 x reading + 1 x Maths + 1 x phonics / grammar per child

= £1,800

To be sent home as part of a blended home-learning package. Physical workbooks will enable parent managing remote learning to alternate the use of devices between children, whilst keeping others engaged in online learning

Early years Foundation Stage.

Nuffield Early Language Intervention January 2021

£ Free + CPD training costs

£600 (estimate)

Government recommendation. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/early-years-support-package-to-help-close-covid-language-gap

 

National Mentor Scheme x 2

October – July

(Wave 1)

£10. 000 on costs

(DfE will subsidise t the salaries 2 x £19, 000)

Due to 25% of disadvantaged in school we are eligible to access this scheme. Applied for 2 x mentors (September 2020)

Update – now Jan 2021

https://www.nasbtt.org.uk/dfe-academic-mentor-programme/

https://nationaltutoring.org.uk/ntp-academic-mentors

https://www.teachfirst.org.uk/academic-mentors

KS1 – focus on phonics / language and communication (closely aligned with school priorities and closing identified gaps)

KS1 – focus on maths (closely aligned with school priorities and closing identified gaps)

Employ and train 5 x graduate tutors to offer small group tuition

From January 2021 (updated timing Nov 2020)

Autumn 2

Training costs

£500

Spring / Summer

2 x hours weekly tutoring

30 weeks

£10.00 hr x 2 hours x 30 weeks x 5 graduates

 

£3000 + additional on costs

 

£15.00 hour if working week goes over 37 hours.

Within the school staff we have 5 graduates / RQTs. Intervention can be closely aligned with classwork and school priorities, staff are known to the children, CPD opportunity for staff in school to develop expertise supported by experienced teachers

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/teaching-learning-toolkit/one-to-one-tuition/  + 5 months progress

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/teaching-learning-toolkit/small-group-tuition/

+ 4 months progress

EEF  Evidence indicates that one to one tuition can be effective, delivering approximately five additional months’ progress on average.

Additional T 0.2 per week

 

ELS Oral Language Intervention

EYFS intervention

 

 

24% children in KS1 have EAL

27% children in EYFS have EAL

Multiple barriers – many also PP

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/teaching-learning-toolkit/oral-language-interventions/ EEF +4 months

Purchase teaching resources to support children learning about metacognition

+ training costs

£1000

EEF “consistently high levels of impact, with pupils making an average of eight months’ additional progress” each year.

School lesson study – tier 1 approach 2020/2021 to develop high quality teaching and learning

 

Projected total spending

 

 

Appendix 2 – Tiered Model Catch-Up Strategy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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