Covid Catch up funding

The school has been funded £62,080 across three instalments in catch up funding.

In order to use this funding most effectively we have used this to support activities and actions that are well supported by research and embed well with the practices and systems within the school rather than out-sourced provision with less accountability and longevity.

Our surveys of students in summer 2020 and analysis in school identified the following areas of priority for funding.

• Supporting reintegration into school, supporting our most vulnerable students and those with agency involvement.
• Supporting literacy and reading for new year 7 students. Given that much of year 6 teaching works towards SATS we were concerned that after a long period of time out of school students’ reading and comprehension would be at a lower level from where usually year 7 join the school. Given that reading is a skill that enables students to access the whole curriculum this was felt to be a priority area to support.
• Emotional wellbeing of students, particularly those with additional needs or disadvantage indicators.

The following strategies were therefore funded with the catch up premium 2020/21:

• Appointment of a temporary ‘Director of reintegration’ this post combined the role of DSL with oversight of agency involvement and worked with the attendance officer to support those struggling the most. This role was incredibly valuable. The remit is wide and gave us the flexibility to ensure that we had the capacity to reach those who need additional engagement. Cost: £20,000 (this covers the salary uplift, temporary role cover and teaching capacity lost to enable role to take place)
• Small group reading programme for Year 7. All students in the middle ability band in Year 7 were allocated to a small (3-4) group and had a fortnightly reading session with a qualified teacher. Our evaluation of this has shown this to be highly valued by students and has helped to identify students in need of additional support.  Cost: £15,000
• Recruitment and training of ELSA practitioners in school. The ELSA role supports students with self-esteem needs and guides them through some of the complex wellbeing issues that they face. These are not counselling sessions, but structured activities that help students to feel positive about school, about their education and about themselves. Cost: £9,000
• We purchased 1:1 online support for Year 12 GCSE resit students. £3,120
• We spent £4,249 on the NCS programme for our Year 11 students to ensure that we maximised the time after the completion of CAGs and give them wider opportunities for personal development that they had missed out on over the course of the academic year.
• We spent £1,000 on additional resources to support the resourcing of online learning, materials and equipment.
• We used the remaining catch up funding to subsidise the Year 7 trip to Kingswood to ensure that all students were able to access the residential trip if they wanted to. We were aware that this year group were unlikely to have been able to attend Year 6 residentials, had missed time together as a year group due to the lockdown and were most in need of the formative experience of a school trip. Due to the changes in restrictions this was pushed back until September but did take place with 119 students taking part. (Cost £8023)

  • Summer School Programme review

    Schools were asked to consider offering a summer school provision to support transition from Year 6 into 7. The funding offer was extended to two weeks for 50% of the student cohort of one week for 100% of the cohort. We believed that if we offered the summer school to all students the overall uptake would be stronger and that this offered the best opportunity for all students to integrate and work together.  The school’s initial provisional funding allocation was £49,000 but as funding would be paid on the basis of the number of students who attended, we sought to keep costs within £21,000 believing that this represented a likely number of attendees (around 100).

    We decided to offer the summer school towards the end of the summer holiday so that it supported students close to their arrival in school and to avoid the impact being lost over the remainder of the break. We allowed a gap however between the end of the summer school before the start of term to avoid creating an exhausting Autumn term. All students were offered places via letter sent to home addresses and flyers also sent to the primary schools. A Microsoft form was used to enable parents to sign up. Our summer school was provided in house and was resourced, supervised and planned by school staff. Rates of pay were determined according to benchmarks and guidance. A DSL was present throughout as well as a member of office staff to provide on-site contact for parents, SEN staff to support students with additional needs, kitchen staff provided on-site catering for lunches and a 1:12 ratio was allowed to ensure that any additional numbers would not be unsafe and to ensure adequate staffing given that we did not know the students and therefore risk assessment allowed for more generous staffing levels.

    The programme offered for students was based on a theme of ‘Medieval Mysteries’. Students worked in four groups which over the course of four days completed four main activities and took place in team building or problem-solving activities in the evening. The main activities were a combination of enrichment and academic sessions. Students were all given a pack with a branded T-shirt, water bottle as well as all the materials they would need for the week. Students took part in story-telling and writing, drama, art and code-breaking all around the theme of medieval life. In the afternoon there were team building tasks, a falconry display, a sports activity and a group presentation. On the Friday there was a trip to Hedingham Castle to put the learning from the week into context. Over the course of the week at total of 97 students attended the summer school. (81 (from 123) non Pupil Premium, 16 (from 37) Pupil Premium students attended. The final costs claimed were:

     Staff Salaries                                £16,065.78

    Kitchen Ingredients                     £123.09

    Trip Bus                                         £700.00

    Stationery                                     £169.53

    Castle Hedingham Entry              £570.00

    Resources, clothing, prizes           £2,893.50

    Lavenham Falconry                      £250.00

    Additional catering and resources                         £238.30              

    Total                                             £21,010.20

 The school received £6293. 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. There was removal of some students struggling with numeracy and literacy as the need was identified, from PSHE lessons to work in small groups.

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.