OUR Catch-up PREMIUM STRATEGY

The partial school closure in 2020 has necessitated a series of actions to support students to catch-up on any missed learning.  We have developed a strategy to explain how we will use our £70,000 of Catch-up Premium funding to support our students.

We have amended our curriculum intent for 2020-2021, particularly looking at the sequencing of topics, to ensure all students have the opportunity to cover the essential knowledge and skills from the period of school closure. This includes a focus on metacognitive skills, which are also delivered through our RESPECT curriculum in tutor time. Our curriculum intent, supported by additional staff training, has also been designed to address the impact of school closure on literacy and numeracy levels across all year groups.

All year groups in the school were assessed at the end of the first half-term, ensuring we have an accurate understanding of the gaps in knowledge and skills for each student. In response to this, we have put in place:

• small-group specialist teaching in English, Mathematics and Science from Years 7-11;
• online tutoring in groups of two or three delivered by our tutor partners from the National Tutoring Programme;
• additional scaffolding or challenge in the classroom.

Finally, we have developed robust contingency plans for remote education to ensure that students receive high quality teaching regardless of whether they or their teacher are self-isolating. We also have an accompanying Remote Education Behaviour and Child Protection Policy. We use Google Classroom as our main platform for this remote education, and have provided digital access for students who require support in this area.  We continue to explore opportunities for increasing our students' access to digital devices and the Internet.

There is information for parents and carers on the presentation we gave at the January 2021 Parent, Carer and Staff Forum meeting.