ESFA Recovery Funding

COVID-19 catch-up premium report

The Covid-19 catch-up premium is funding given to all schools to help support the curriculum in ensuring that students are supported to catch-up due to potential loss of learning from the school closures and not being able to attend school from isolating for example, during the covid-19 pandemic.

The use of this funding is at the discretion of the school to use it best as they see fit to support all students and especially those students identified as falling most behind.

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has issued guidance from evidence based approaches and suggests a 3-tiered approach:

1. Teaching and Whole School Strategies; supporting great teaching, pupil assessment and feedback, transition support
2. Targeted Support; 1:1 and small group transition, intervention programs, extended school time
3. Wider strategies; supporting parents and carers, access to technology, summer support

When returning from the pandemic in 2020/21 the following strategies were implemented.

Teaching and whole-school strategies

Supporting great teaching, transition support and pupil assessment and feedback will happen as a matter of course. We have adapted our strategies but our core goals and values remain the same. Below are the four main changes that have been made in September 2020.

• All NQT (Newly Qualified Teachers) have been enrolled on the Early Career Framework to ensure that any training missed is visited during their first year of teaching.
• We will use Iris Connectto allow observation of teachers between bubbles. This will be particularly useful for NQTs starting their career in 2020
• During the first half term teachers will use the recovery curriculum to embed key skills from the previous academic year. Low stakes quizzes and formative assessment will inform teachers planning to ensure that the majority of children are ready to start their chronological years curriculum by the October 2020 half term
• Routines and clarity of expectations will support transition. Our training focus for the start of the year will include re introducing children to techniques from Teach like and Championand metacognition.

Targeted approaches 

Targeted approaches 1: We plan to target 120 children in Years 4 – 6 for 1:1 Maths tuition using the tuition partners scheme.

We are currently planning to use Third Space learning as they have a track record in delivering this form of catch up. All partners have been subject to quality, safeguarding and evaluation standards. We will be targeting the children who have been most impacted detrimentally by the home learning during the pandemic (based on Autumn 1 2020 data). In addition, all children who receive pupil premium funding in Years 4-6 will receive this intervention.

Targeted approaches 2: Children in Year 3 will be offered a speech and language intervention as part of an extended school day. Again, this will be offered to children who were most affected by school closures and those in receipt of Pupil premium

Targeted approaches 3: Children in Year 2 will receive an additional 3 hours small group intervention that will be focused on reading and maths and take part during the school day.

Targeted approaches 4: Children in Year 6 will be offered mentoring with online learning. This is to ensure that they can complete their homework independently and successfully continue learning if their bubble shuts. This will be completed as part of the extended school day. If successful, it will be rolled out to younger year groups.

Wider strategies

Our learning from the last lockdown suggests that children need to be taught to use, and have easy access to, online learning platforms. In order to support this, we have upgraded our IT infrastructure so that this can be taught easily at school. We have also purchased 180 Chromebooks so that all children can have access to technology. These chrome books will supplement the three provided by the DFE. We believe that this will be beneficial for two reasons. The first is, that if a bubble closes we would like all children to have access to the technology so that they can easily take part in remote learning. The second is, that better access to technology in school will increase the amount of 1:1 tuition that children can access.

Now that schools have reopened fully and many of the gaps in learning caused by the pandemic have been overcome. Our ongoing use of catch up funding can be seen in our pupil premium strategy.

Funding 2021 – 2022

Hadrian Academy received £7,540.00 ESFA Recover Premium and £8,100.01, ESFA National Tutoring Programme.

Funding 2022 – 2023

Hadrian Academy received £7,250.00 ESFA Recover Premium and £8,100.00, ESFA National Tutoring Programme.

--