Busbridge C of E Junior School
VLE

Covid Catch-Up Funding

 

Covid Catch-Up Premium

Following the national lockdown and resulting partial school closure in March 2020, the government announced a Covid Catch-Up Premium - funding that would be allocated to schools. Busbridge CofE Junior School was allocated £80 per pupil based on 240 pupils meaning that in total we received £19,200 of Covid Catch-Up Premium, paid in three tranches across the academic year 2020/21. Money from this grant has mainly been spent on staffing: both increasing the hours of (i) staff who support pupils' emotional needs as well as (ii) staff who support pupil's academic ‘catch up’ needs.

Our Home School Link Worker (HSLW) and Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA) have both increased their hours to support children's mental health and well-being, due to a rise in the number of children who are in need of their support. Academic support has been given in different ways. Additional staff have been working in school to release teachers to work with children in their class. For example, from September 2020 a PE specialist has taught whole-class Dance which has enabled the class teachers to work with small groups for maths in a catch-up capacity. During the Autumn Term 2020 an additional teacher has been employed to teach English, and some differentiated groupings have meant that the class teacher has been able to work with specific learners and those who require catch-up support in English. Due to the need to stagger lunchtimes, lunchtime supervision staff have also increased their hours to enable the Learning Support Assistants to run a range of intervention sessions for some of our learners.

As well as funding additional staffing, the Catch-Up Premium has been used to purchase equipment to support Home Learning. It has also been used to facilitate the training of staff in interventions to support needs such as reading and phonics.

This statement will be reviewed in the Summer Term 2021 once we have implemented our Catch-Up provision plans following the January/February 2021 partial school closure.