COVID-19 Catch Up Funding

Catch-Up Funding Plan 2020-21 

We aim to support all students to achieve their potential and ensure they are emotionally and academically prepared for the next stage of their lives.

We achieve this by:

• Developing character and culture in the classroom and in our community
• Delivering high quality teaching
• Ensuring inclusion for all students, especially those with special educational needs and disadvantaged students
• Focus on attendance and literacy in line with the school improvement plan 

The Impact of Teaching Time Lost Due to COVID-19

We have been collaborating across all the levels of our organisation to develop our plans to welcome back our students to school and are writing to share the principles of our plan with you. 

An overview of our plans for academic and pastoral support are above.  They include strategies and programmes to nurture and develop skills as well as recover learning.  The government’s COVID catch-up premium, £80 per student, has been taken into account and while some strategies will be bespoke for identified individuals, every child should expect to benefit from these plans.  We know many will agree that teachers and families across the country have provided extraordinary support to help children learn at home during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, we recognise that for many children, the disruption caused by school closures will have had a negative impact on learning and wellbeing. 

Every school will have been affected by COVID-19 differently and we do not underestimate the needs of our school community. The right way to support students will differ between schools. 

Our prevailing recovery principle is about how we plan to tackle the impact of lost teaching time rather than specifically focusing on catching up on the individual tasks that were set during the partial closure. 

While curriculum catch-up is something we will address, for many children, simply returning to school will be what they need to re-socialise and to reacquaint with the routines and habits of effective learning.   In lessons, the identification and addressing of misconceptions arising from home learning will be a priority.  Low-stakes assessment, including teacher questioning, will help teachers to plan next steps.  We will make arrangements for students who are continuing to shield or those isolating. 

Our pastoral support package focuses on nurturing productive relationships and learners’ wellbeing.  We recognise that each young person will require varying types and degrees of support and we are building this into our plans.  Students need to be ready to learn to get the most out of school and we are confident our pastoral support plans will promote this.  In Key Stage 3, we have adopted the Leadership, Organisation, Resilience, Initiative and Communication (LORIC) model, a programme designed to build and foster respect and responsibility, Oxted’s core values. 

We recognise that it is important to explore the experiences the school community has faced during the global pandemic. When students return to school, we will be offering them the opportunity to consider the challenges society has faced, celebrate the positives and provide support for those who have found the situation particularly difficult. 

In drawing up our plans, we have taken students’ views into account through online student council meetings.  We have invited parents and carers views on the principles of our plans too.

School Priorities

Priority 1 – Character and Culture 

• Behaviour
  • School models the behaviour it wants to see. It ensures the new behaviour systems are in place and understood by all. The School rewards the behaviour it wants to see. There is specific support in place for students who we know will struggle with the time away from School. School takes the opportunity to ensure clear and consistent messaging around behaviour
• Cultural Capital
  • We are launching a new tutor time programme that will be about Leadership, Organisation, Resilience, Initiative and Communication (LORIC)
    
    
• Social Recovery
  • Pastoral teams have a plan to re-engage vulnerable students, ensuring recovery from time away due to COVID-19. Students who struggle to attend School are supported across the School 

Priority 2 – Good Quality Implementation

• Good Quality Teaching and Learning
  • We are going to ensure we continue with our whole-school priorities of improving the quality of teaching and learning through implementation of the THINK strategies
    
    
• Recovery Curriculum
  • Curriculum areas to adapt schemes of work to ensure there is effective use of assessment to inform planning. Curriculum leaders identify threshold concepts and ensure effective tracking of these across year groups. Teaching in the first three weeks to be independent of any prior COVID-19 learning to ensure every child can experience success and form good learning habits
    
    
• Intervention
  • The School has an effective plan on how to use the additional funding required to ensure no child’s education is impacted by COVID-19, especially vulnerable students 

Priority 3 – Inclusion

• SEND
  • Quality first teaching underpins good SEND teaching but also allows enough capacity and expertise to ensure effective intervention is in place for SEND students
    
    
• Literacy
  • Quality first teaching underpins good Literacy teaching but also allows enough capacity and expertise to ensure effective intervention is in place for students below their chronological reading age 

These priorities will be underpinned by high quality staff CPD, including directed time on subject knowledge and pedagogy. 

Proposed Spending of the Catch-Up Fund

We aim to spend the catch-up funding on the following activities although these will be reviewed throughout the year to ensure the most appropriate and effective use of the funding. The reach and depth of the expected impact has been considered in prioritising activities. The Trust plans to spend £105k on making technology available for those who don’t have it at home, £10k on KS2 baseline assessments and £18k on the national tutoring programme. Remaining funds are allocated to individual Trust schools on a priority basis.