What is catch up funding?

Catch up funding was provided to schools following the Covid19 pandemic as a result of the school closures and disrupted learning experienced by children. The government set out that this funding be used for specific activities to support pupils’ education recovery in line with the curriculum expectations and as such, the ultimate aim of the funding was to support pupils in catching up on missed learning.

Catch Up Plan

We followed the EEF research on evidence-based approaches to support pupils to catch up, using whole class, targeted and bespoke academic support. We used the funding to:

• deploy additional staff to support pupils within lesson times and for additional intervention on key skills including reading, writing and mathematics;
• employed an academic mentor to support pupils across the academy in core reading, writing and mathematic skills;
• extended hours for staff members to lead clubs and interventions for small groups and on a 1:1 tuition basis;
• purchased resources to support targeted group work including classic fictional texts, a new spelling scheme, maths workbooks for homework and writing aids such as dictionaries, thesauruses and those to support creative writing;
• we placed high priority on pupils’ mental health and wellbeing, purchasing resources to support all pupils to reconnect and re-establish relationships and self-esteem following extended period of school closures.