Recovery Premium

The recovery premium grant is part of the government’s package of funding to support pupils whose education has been impacted by coronavirus (COVID-19).

Schools, headteachers and teachers will decide how to use the Pupil Premium and Recovery Premium allocation, as they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for individual pupils.

Source DfE Website

Spending:

At Whitley Village School, this money was used to:

• Purchase curriculum resources and materials that support pupils to get back on track. These were White Rose Premium Maths Resources, Spelling Shed, IDL Software and new reading books.
• Fund additional support staff to develop the outcomes for children who have been identified as needing “catch up” in their learning.

Aims

The broad aims for “catch up” at Whitley Village School:

• Attainment outcomes at end of 2022-23 for all year groups will be at least in line with those at the point of lockdown in March 2020. This means that if a child was working at an age-related expectation in a subject in March 2020, they are working at an age-related expectation, or higher, in that same subject by the end of the year.
• By the end of the 2022-23 academic year, attainment outcomes for all year groups will be at least in line with those at the end of the 2019-20 academic year.

The mental health needs of pupils that have arisen as a result of the pandemic are met and supported by the school in a variety of ways, following a personalised approach for each pupil.

Recovery Premium at Whitley is

(For all children)

• Working through well sequenced, purposeful learning schemes. For example, our school-created writing schemes are being adapted to focus on missed objectives and consolidate basics.  In maths, we will utilise the White Rose Maths Scheme as our spine of learning and we have been able to use catch up premium to purchase ‘premium resources’ that have been purpose-written to support or ‘catch up’.
• Focus on consolidation of basic skills. The core skills which enable successful learning will require increased curriculum time across all year groups. These include: phonic blending, handwriting, spelling of high frequency words, basic sentence punctuation, times tables recall, basic addition & subtraction fact recall and reading skills relevant to age.
• Additional lesson time on core teaching. Reading, writing and maths teaching will require increased teaching time in order to cover missed learning – particularly in the autumn term. In order to keep a broad and balanced curriculum, some subject areas may be taught as blocked days rather than weekly lessons in the autumn term. We will also place greater emphasis on short burst writing tasks in other curriculum areas.  This will be complemented by reading across the curriculum.
• Particular focus on early reading and phonics. This is always a focus in the school and will continue to be so in order to develop children’s reading ability and vocabulary. 
• Assessment of learning and of basic skills to identify major gaps. Teachers will work continuously to identify gaps in learning and adapt teaching accordingly.
• Time spent on mental health, wellbeing and social skills development. This will be at the core of all catch up work, as many children will have not been in a formal school setting for a number of months.

(For some children)

• Additional support and focus on basic core skills. Supported by additional staffing utilising catch up premium – dependent on need as identified through ongoing assessment.
• Additional time to practice basic skills. This again will be dependent on needs of children in order to re-establish good progress in the essentials (phonics and reading, increasing vocabulary, writing and mathematics) and there will be flexibility on timetables to allow this. We will also run a series of ‘Catch Up Clubs’ after school in the Spring term.

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