COVID-19 Catch-up Premium Plan 2020-21

Benfield School COVID19 Catch Up Plan Review 2020-21.pdf

Benfield School and young people across the country have experienced unprecedented disruption to their education as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19).

In response the government has announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up. This includes a one-off universal £650 million catch-up premium for the 2020 to 2021 academic year to ensure that schools have the support they need to help all pupils make up for lost teaching time. In 2020 – 2021 Benfield School will receive £83,000 from the government under the Coronavirus (COVID-19) catch-up premium. In addition, NEAT will be supporting students through investing in upgrades to ICT infrastructure and enabling access to ICT devices for students.

We have based our decisions on where to direct COVID-19 premium funding on the following key findings:

Changing teaching strategies which demand feedback and support via 1:1 tuition and online packages to provide staff with opportunities for effective AfL
Students at Benfield School respond well to teaching support in small groups, historically this has been offered to small cohorts, the funding gives us the opportunity to deliver to a wider cohort and target both disadvantaged and high attaining students. This will enable gap filling and free-up classroom time to work on stretch and challenge, improving the resilience and ambition of our learners.
The difficulties with technology coverage for our students reflect the levels of deprivation in the geographical area and the current capacity of the school’s ICT infrastructure.

Responsibility for Catch Up Funding:

Senior Leadership Team Members

All members of the Leadership team have a key responsibility for raising the attainment, achievement and aspirations of all pupils, and within that, catch-up pupils.

Curriculum Leaders / Assistant Curriculum leaders / Curriculum areas

It is expected that they will complete progress monitoring and QA of teaching and learning so that effective tracking of pupil progress can take place and intervention strategies can be modified where appropriate.

Year 11, 12 & 13 Progress Manager / Year Leaders

The progress of pupils is shared through SISRA and via data challenge meetings with the Deputy Headteacher (Quality of Education) so that they are aware of key characteristics and are able to track and monitor the progress, behaviour and attendance of their pupils. All conversations with pupils/parents and carers are steered towards pupil progress and achievement.

Teaching staff

All teachers are expected to use data that is made available to them, and through regular formative assessments, marking and feedback to ensure that lesson planning is completed and effective in order to meet the needs of all learners. They are expected to have identified pupils who belong to key groups so that initiatives can be appropriately targeted. They are also expected to ensure that feedback is consistently used to improve pupil outcomes and to accelerate progress.

We have approached our planning to school improvement during the COVID-19 restrictions using the EEF 3-tiered approach. We have therefore considered our issues and solutions in the following way:

Teaching and whole school strategies

High-quality teaching for all
Effective diagnostic assessment
Supporting remote learning
Focusing on professional development

Targeted academic support strategies

High-quality one to one and small group tuition
Additional Teaching Assistants and targeted support
Academic tutoring
Planning for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)

Wider strategies

Supporting pupils’ social, emotional and behavioural needs
Planning carefully for adopting a Social and Emotional Learning curriculum
Communicating with and supporting parents