Catch Up Funding and Provision

Click here to view our Catch-Up Funding Strategy Statement

In June, the government announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up following the closure of schools during the Covid pandemic.  Further guidance has now been released (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-catch-up-premium) showing that the money is to be split between a catch-up premium and a national tutoring scheme. The money for the catch up premium is designed to ensure that schools have the support they need for all pupils make up for lost teaching time, and the money for the national tutoring school is designed to provide additional, targeted support for those children and young people who need the most help.

 The catch-up premium is funded on a per pupil basis at £80 per pupil. This will be based on the previous year’s census, meaning we are predicting Divine Saviour will be in receipt of £16,320.  It is not expected, however, that there will be a spend of £80 on each and every pupil in schools. The government has made it clear that the spending of this money will be down to schools to allocate as they see fit. To support schools to make the best use of this funding, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has published a support guide for schools with evidence-based approaches to catch up for all students.

There are two broad aims for “catch up” at Divine Saviour School:

-  the mental health needs of pupils are well met and supported by the school.

- attainment outcomes at end of 2020-21 for all year groups will be at least in line with those at the end of 2019-20

At Divine Saviour, following the advice from the EEF the Covid-19 ‘Catch up’ money will be used in order to provide:

• curriculum resources and materials that support mental health and well-being of pupils
• the purchase of curriculum resources and materials that support “catch up” e.g. an additional on line reading resource to allow all pupils to access a high quality graduated reading materials remotely
• employment of experienced teachers to provide blocks of tutoring to small groups of children who have been identified as needing “catch up” in their learning.