The Government announced a £1 billion fund for education, split between a catch-up premium and a national tutoring scheme, to address the learning loss due to Covid-19. (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-catch-up-premium)

The catch-up premium was funded on a per pupil basis per pupil. This was based on the previous year’s census. The spending of this money was down to schools to allocate as they saw best.

Our Post Covid Catch Up Strategy: 

The academic years after COVID were different from any other year. We could not simply pick up where we left off, nor rely on past plans, or ‘off the shelf’ planning. We had to review, audit and adapt our planning on many occasions.

We worked together to ensure that children were happy, settled, secure and helped to learn and make progress from their individual starting points. We were committed to ensuring that school life returned to as close to ‘normal’ for our children as possible.

We expected that the curriculum that we had planned for that year would be in place, un-adapted, and in full from September 2021.

The principles at the heart of our strategy were:

• The prioritisation of children and staff’s mental and emotional wellbeing, including the opportunity to exert themselves physically.
• Ensuring that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are prioritised for all interventions and support as are likely to have been more affected particularly severely by closures and may need more support to return to school and settle back into school life.
• Focusing on re-socialisation into school routines and the re-establishment of speaking and listening skills.
• That if children have forgotten aspects of the foundations of Reading, Writing or Maths already covered; then opportunities for re-teaching and practising this content, to regain momentum in reading and phonics will be provided.
• Ensuring we offer every child an outstanding and exciting curriculum.

You can download the plan in full below.