Catch Up funding

The government announced a pot of £1billion pounds to support children and young people to catch up lost time after school closure. This money is especially important for the most vulnerable and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

As a junior school we are eligible to receive some of this money. This works out at around £80 per pupil and the money is paid into the school budget over three terms starting in autumn 2020 and concluding in summer 2023. The school is expected to use the sum as a single total for ‘specific activities to support pupils to catch up for lost teaching over the previous months’

As a school we have made the decision to use the funds to employ a full time teacher for a year who will be supporting the teaching and learning of children across the school. The teacher will work with children from all classes within the school, supporting individuals and small groups with a particular focus on areas of the curriculum in which they have fallen behind. As well as this focused work, the new member of staff will work alongside current staff teaching the whole class, thereby allowing the class teacher to work with children in smaller groups or on an individual basis to help identified children focus on their next steps in learning.

The learning needs of the children are regularly monitored and assessed by their class teacher and the catch up teacher works with each teacher to address the ever changing needs of the pupils.

The deployment of this catch up teacher is part of the school plan to address its key school improvement priority for the year which is to provide pupils with the support that they require to enable them to catch up academically following the period of school closure.