What is catch up funding?

“This is an unprecedented situation and is having an impact on so many lives.”

Children and young people across the country experienced unprecedented disruption to their education as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19) and, in response, the government announced £1 billion of funding to support children to get back on track and return to working at age-related expectations. This included a one-off universal £650 million catch up premium for the academic year 2020-2021: intended to ensure schools had the support they needed to help all pupils make up for lost teaching time.

School allocations were calculated on a per pupil basis and, based on our school roll in October 2020, we received a total of £80 for each pupil in Reception, KS1 and KS2: 194 pupils in total and a catch up premium of £15,520.

Schools are required to use this funding to support their pupils to catch up for lost teaching over the previous months, in line with the guidance on curriculum expectations for the academic year 2021-2022, and have the flexibility to spend the funding in the areas that would most benefit from this additional funding.

Having reviewed our end of year data in July 2021, the Senior Leadership Team, in consultation with the teaching teams and governing body, felt that the best use of the Catch Up Premium would be to:

• Employ an additional Teaching Assistant to work in Year 1 in the morning: from 8.30am-12.00pm. Year 1 had only completed two full terms in Reception and assessment showed that the children would need additional support with their personal, social and emotional development and additional support with their writing. Against the prioritised learning objectives, only 70% of the children were working at age-related expectations for writing at the end of Early Years. 

• Employ an additional Teaching Assistant to work in Year 2 in the morning: from 8.30am-12.00pm. Year 2 had only completed two full terms in Reception and two full terms in Year 1 and assessment showed that the children would need continued support with their personal, social and emotional development and continued support across all subjects - particularly writing. Against the prioritised learning objectives, only 73% of the children were working at age-related expectations for writing at the end of Year 1.