Catch-Up Premium Funding
What is the Catch-Up Premium Funding?
In the previous academic year, the government announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up for lost time after the extended school closure. This was especially important for those pupils with the most vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds. This funding included:
- a one-off universal £650 million catch up premium for the 2020 to 2021 academic year to ensure that schools had the support they needed to help all pupils make up for lost teaching time
- a £350 million National Tutoring Programme to provide additional, targeted support for those children and young people who needed the most help, which included:
- an oral language intervention programme for reception-aged children
Funding Allocations
Due to our school being a primary academy, we were eligible for this essential funding. The school allocations were calculated on a per pupil basis; the government granted £80 for each pupil from Reception to Year 6 inclusive. Similar to Pupil Premium, we had to use the sum available as a single total even though funding was calculated on a per pupil or per place basis.
It has been clarified that this additional funding will only be available for the 2020 to 2021 academic year and will not be added to schools’ baselines in calculating future years’ funding allocations.
Our Approach
Here at Fairfield, we have used this funding for specific activities to support our pupils to catch up for lost teaching over the previous months, in line with our curriculum expectations. We have identified the gaps in knowledge, carried-out extensive research and then implemented effective evidence-based approaches and catch-up strategies to help close the gaps identified and recover post closure.
Please click on the document link below to read our detailed strategy, which specifics our rationale, approach, research, measures of impact and associated costings.
https://www.flipbookpdf.net/web/site/018432baaffed577900566db9c18edc374594c6a202012.pdf.html
Accountability
As a school, we must be able to show that we are using the funding to resume teaching a normal curriculum as quickly as possible following partial or full school closure: this is detailed in our strategy.
We have held specific meetings where our governors and trustees have discussed our approach to catch-up from September 2020, including our plans for and use of catch-up funding. This included consideration of whether our approach to this funding was in line with our catch-up priorities.
If you have any questions, please contact Mr. J. Gale (Catch-Up Premium Lead).
