COVID-19 Catch-up Premium
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the widespread closure of schools for the majority of pupils from March 2020 and again in January 2021, the government has allocated each school a sum of money to spend in the way deemed most appropriate by the school. This money has been allocated to help pupils who may have fallen behind because of the extended school absence, catch-up in their learning. The amount of money each school receives is decided according to the number of pupils in the school. We are also supplementing this funding with our normal school funding to ensure that we can provide support to those that most need it. Individual pupil assessments were made at the end of the Spring term 2021, which has then enabled us to target support to those children who need it most.
What is Broadgate Primary School spending this funding on?
We strongly believe that the most effective way of helping children to learn is by ensuring that we have high pupil to staff ratios so that children can have more adult interactions. We have therefore, chosen to allocate our funding on additional staff who work across the school.
- Additional teacher time
Having a number of part-time members of teaching staff means that we are able to provide additional teacher time. These hours are spent providing specific interventions to groups and individuals, in reading, writing and maths throughout the school day. For some of our youngest children this may mean additional phonics teaching. For others this may be additional support in class (or outside the class in small groups) in core subject areas. The majority of this teacher time will be focussed on our younger pupils who have comparatively missed a larger percentage of their time in school.
- Additional teaching assistants
As a school we believe that the most effective learning takes place in classrooms with a qualified teacher planning and delivering the teaching. Having also identified that the largest gaps in learning are in writing, we initially made the decision to appoint a teaching assistant who spends time in each class in KS2 working alongside the teachers to support those pupils most in need of additional support. This strategy was then extended to provide an additional teaching assistant in reception in order to provide further support for our youngest pupils. The children benefit from teaching input from their own teacher but then scaffolded support to achieve the learning intentions from the focused support of another adult. Existing school staff also provide additional intervention sessions, but the main aim is to support the pupils most in need within their normal lessons. From September 2021 we have allocated sufficent funding to ensure that there will be at least two adults in all KS2 classes at all times.
- Maths sets in KS2
Following the individual assessments made at the end of the Spring term it was identified that the effect of two lockdowns had resulted in a large span of ability within maths in particular. In order to address these differences and ensure that the needs of individual learners are met, we have introduced sets into our maths teaching in KS2 classes. In this way we can better ensure that teaching is tailored to ensure that all children can make progress from their current level of understanding.
How will the impact of this funding be assessed?
Being away from school for extended periods of time has undoubtably had an impact on all children. Therefore we have put in place strategies to support the resilience and learning development of all our pupils (i.e. higher pupil to staff ratios and reviewing our curriculum plans to ensure that there is ample opportunity for consolidation before all new topics are introduced). In addition it was clear that some children would require more focused support, therefore, target children were identified through our initial baseline assessments at the beginning of the autumn term, and then again through the autumn and spring term assessment cycles. Pupil progress meetings with teachers then confirmed who the target children are and their end of year targets. The impact of the funding will be assessed through ongoing teacher assessments (marking and feedback after each lesson) and more formally through the summer assessment cycle. An evaluation of the impact of the funding will be completed at the end of the summer term 2021. This will inform teachers' planning of the curriculum for September 2021 and beyond.