The school received £6,200 in catch up funding to help ensure that students that fell below the expected level made additional progress to help close the gap between themselves and the rest of the year group.

The school put in place a number of strategies to help achieve this outcome.

1. The first involved highlighting these students on the data collection sheets and in English and Maths teachers registers so they were aware of them. The data collected on these students was then available separately at each assessment point so their progress could be monitored.
2. Within the classroom teachers used their expertise and learning support assistants to ensure that these students were engaged and understanding the work that was being covered.
3. The accelerated Reading scheme operated by the school was used to assess these students more regularly and to monitor reading progress. Students whose profiles showed limited progress were mentored on choice of books and where LSA’s were available one to one reading in reading lessons was carried out.
4. The money received was spent on the employment of an experienced intervention teacher from January until April for 0.5FTE. During this time she weekly removed students in groups of 6-8 three times a week to work on their Literacy skills.
5. There was removal of some students struggling with numeracy from PSHE lessons to work in small groups, however the coverage was less here than for the literacy.

The model used for the literacy intervention proved to be very successful with students making above the expected progress compared with the rest of the cohort and therefore effectively closing the gap apparent at the end of Key Stage 2.