Langley Primary Catch Up Programme Report

Funding

Funding for this programme comes from a one off grant to the school of £80 per school age pupil for the purpose of learning lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of school as a result of lockdowns.

The total funding is just over £32,000

Rationale

In providing catch up for pupils it is important to provide both for their academic and social needs. Children return to school with a huge variety of experiences and losses. Each child will have had differing levels of home support for learning and access to remote learning. At Langley, we believe that no matter what the child’s circumstances they have the entitlement to

1. Support to return, and maintain, learning in a context which is secure and enables them to be confident but reflective about what has happened.
2. Academic support to return them to at least the position they were in before the March 2020 lockdown relative to what is expected for a child of their age.

Context

The school has a well-developed level of mental health support for children and staff in the school and is a trauma and attachment aware school. It already has a counselling service for pupils who need such support and support for families through SinglePoint.  As such the plan mainly focusses on the second aim.

Projects

1. A one hour per week after school catch up programme for pupils who are at risk of falling behind due to the pandemic. This will run from Y2 to Y6 and be in small groups of 6 to 8 pupils.
2. A Reading Superhero programme within school to support children in their fluency of reading – an aspect of reading analysis has shown children are struggling with due to a reduced amount of reading at home and fewer opportunities to read with staff due to the DfE guidelines for arrangements for teaching.
3. Purchase of additional reading books for KS2 children to allow them to have a suitable reading book both in school and to take home.
4. The purchase of a willow classroom for our forest to provide a place of reflection and relaxation for pupils
5. Purchase of rewards for a competition related to accuracy of times tables based on TTRockStars.

Staffing for projects 1 and 2  will come from existing school staff. This has the huge advantage of having teachers or experienced support staff working with the children who know them well already. This is both cost effective but also ensures pupils will be worked with in a way that is well known to them and that they feel secure in. The Reading Superhero staff will be suitably qualified dinner supervisors to provide additional staffing.

Monitoring

The projects that are intervention based will be monitored half termly with entry and exit tests. Decisions about whether the intervention should cease or continue for individual children will be made based on these assessments and progress more generally made in their learning in class. It is essential that new learning be shown to have transferred to their general learning.

Once a child has caught up to their relative level of learning compared to March 2020 they will be moved off of the programme. The exception to this is the Y6 programme where all children will be offered support to ensure they are academically ready for high school.

Costings

Catch up after school programme – 1hr x 12 staff per week for 6 weeks x 4          £9,360

Resources for Catch up                                                                                                          £720     

2 x Reading tutor 2hrs per day per week for 1 term  (Band B)                                    £3,600

Resources for SATs Club                                                                                                     £2000

Additional reading books                                                                                                      £770

Willow outdoor classroom                                                                                                   £170

TTRockstars rewards                                                                                                             £500

Total projected spend is £17,120

Review of plan – September 2021

The Recovery Plan was completed in July of 2021 and then reviewed. It was carried out in full, but with mixed results. The review of the individual parts was as follows

1. A one hour per week after school catch up programme for pupils who are at risk of falling behind due to the pandemic. This will run from Y2 to Y6 and be in small groups of 6 to 8 pupils.

This was fully implemented with each class being supported by a member of staff. Where the children consistently attended the majority made accelerated progress. However, for too many children the parents were either unwilling to collect the child later that day or only allowed their child to attend sporadically despite agreeing to let their child attend. This affected the majority of groups and diluted the effect of the work done by the staff. As such it was not effective enough to justify repeating it.

1. A Reading Superhero programme within school to support children in their fluency of reading – an aspect of reading analysis has shown children are struggling with due to a reduced amount of reading at home and fewer opportunities to read with staff due to the DfE guidelines for arrangements for teaching.

This was a tale of two halves. In KS1 the programme worked very well due to the consistency of the reading Superhero. In KS2 the Reading Superhero was absent for large parts of the time and the programme had little effect. Where we can gain the consistency of the person this is worth continuing and the plan is to continue this in KS1 this academic year.

1. Purchase of additional reading books for KS2 children to allow them to have a suitable reading book both in school and to take home.

These have been well used and really helped in terms of reading provision. Now we are not under the same restrictions the books are available as part of general stock.

1. The purchase of a willow classroom for our forest to provide a place of reflection and relaxation for pupils

This has been planted and is currently growing into a useable structure.

1. Purchase of rewards for a competition related to accuracy of times tables based on TTRockStars.

The provision of the bugs as rewards has supported the children in returning to the pre-pandemic levels of use of the programme and knowledge of times tables is returning quickly to where it should be.

Plans for the academic year 2021-2

The Recovery funding has been continued into this year.  There was a remaining amount of £27,000 last year and a further £20,000 provided over this school year. This gives a total of some £47,000.

The current needs for recovery

Analysis and discussion of the school results showed that there were a variety of needs within school to ensure the children catch up to where they were pre-pandemic.

1. Quality of speech in EYFS – this is partly the production of clear speech but mainly the ability of children to speak in complete sentences and building their vocabulary.
2. Social skills in EYFS – many self-help skills that would usually be encouraged and supported within school are lacking (for example, toileting, dressing, recognising names, holding a pencil etc.)
3. Phonic skills in EYFS and KS1
4. Reading in KS1 and for some children moving into Y3
5. Individual children with specific gaps in their learning in KS2.

Many of these needs can be met through quality first teaching and by staff tweaking the curriculum for the pupils. For example, in terms of speech we can give greater time in school to children needing speech therapy and tweaked the EYFS curriculum to ensure the children have many opportunities to talk and discuss with the adults acting as role models and facilitating the talk. The need to improve Social Skills in EYFS will be done through a new Award for the families of these children in conjunction with SinglePoint.

However, there are 3 areas we feel need extra support and propose to use the recovery premium funding for;

1. An additional member of support staff in Y1 full time to act as a learning champion for those children with below expected phonic and writing skills.
2. A reading champion for Y2 to ensure those children struggling to learn to read quickly enough are given daily reading teaching and practice above and beyond the quality first teaching they get.
3. One to two provision for a small number of KS2 children that give us especial concern across the classes in Y2-5 (Y6 will be catered for within school capacity). However, this will be subject to careful consideration of those pupils who will actually attend additional tutoring each week over a half term.

This plan will fit into the ambitious goal for all the children that by the end of this academic year all children will have returned to their pre-pandemic levels of achievement (for example, if they were on track pre-pandemic they will be back on track by the end of this school year) and for those who were behind in their learning pre-pandemic they do even better than this.

Costings

1. Band D learning practitioner for Y1 - £20,000 (brought in via a supply agency to ensure an immediate start)
2. A Reading Superhero for 2 hours per day for Y2 - £6,000.
3. One to one tuition for KS2 pupils (approximately 12 per term)- £5,000

Total cost: £31,000. We will review progress against our plan at the end of the Autumn term and use the remainder of the funding (£16,000) at this stage.