Why do we have catch-up programmes?

The government has recognised that the impact of the pandemic will be multifaceted. Obviously, a major impact will be on the academic progress which children make. After the first lockdown teachers reported that many children were behind where we would have expected them to be.
 

Although the take up of the remote learning provision at Goldstone has been excellent, the teachers have done a fantastic job and the majority of parents and carers have been great stand-in teachers, it is inevitable that there will have been further ‘falling behind’ over the post-Christmas lockdown.

How much money have the Government given Goldstone?

The Government has given us a grant of £26000 to help children catch up. We have adopted an approach which will hopefully help us to help as many children as possible.
 

After the first lockdown we assessed all children to see how they had progressed to that point. We were impressed that many children had managed to stay within the levels we thought they should be and had kept pace with where we thought that they would be looking at what they had achieved up to that point.

How will the money be spent?

Obviously, there is a tension between getting older children prepared to move on to secondary school and the lack of time to ‘catch-up’ and the fact that the younger children have missed such a large proportion of their schooling to date. We are also mindful that there are some children who are more vulnerable to falling behind because of a lack of opportunity to learn at home.
 

We have tried to give each year group what they need based on the opinions of the year group leaders who have discussed this with the staff in the year groups. We have also taken into consideration the staff who are available.
 

Part of the money has been spent through the year on half of the time of our Higher Level Teaching Assistant. Two and a half days per week are being covered by supply staff so that they can deliver interventions targeting children across the school who need support. This will account for approximately £11000.
 

Over thirteen thousand pounds has been split between the year groups so that they can run specific programmes with the staff of that year group. The distribution of the money is set out below.

Some of the hours identified above will happen during school time, with additional staff taking on the hours, whilst in some cases, the time will be after school which will allow staff who work with children during the day to work additional hours with them at home.

This will leave us with a small amount of money to tackle some issues which will no doubt arise as we return to school in the spring.

This is the situation at the time of writing this. There is currently talk of additional money being provided by the government. If this materialises we shall assess the situation and adjust our catch-up programme accordingly.