Covid-19 Catch-up Funding Plan 2020/21

Background to the Catch-up premium.

The government announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up lost time after school closure. This is especially important for the most vulnerable and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. School allocations are calculated on a per pupil basis. Schools should use this funding for specific activities to support their pupils to catch up for lost teaching over the previous months, in line with the curriculum expectations for the next academic year. While schools can use their funding in a way that suits their cohort and circumstances, they are expected to use this funding for specific activities which will help pupils catch up on missed education.

This funding should be utilised across various areas of support for students to ensure that lost learning is mitigated and students are fully supported through this disruption to education and for some, their home settings. To utilise this funding, we continued to build upon our strategic plan driving forward with our intervention plans, resources across the academy and reviewing research from the EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) to ensure our provision was driven by research and effective and proven practice. The table below outlines our expenditure to support students in recovering lost learning.

Expenditure overview

Remote/Home learning:

Heading	Description/detail	Amount (£)
ClassCharts	An online provision set up to support students, parents, and staff with remote learning. This platform provided access for students to view and submit work as well as communicate with their teachers. This provision allows the academy to carefully track and monitor the attendance to online learning and target students who were not attending or submitting remote work.	3,444
Web Cams/Speakers	Following the impact of the pandemic (specifically the isolation of students and teachers) followed by the move to remote learning and remote teaching, webcams were purchased and installed into every classroom and office. This allows remote teaching to take place, lessons to be pre-recorded and virtual meetings/parents’ evenings to go ahead. This aims to ensure students do not fall behind as lessons will be readily available and also allows the pastoral connection to remain strong, through daily virtual tutor time through any closure.	949
Rewards/incentives	To support with engagement with remote learning with reference to attendance, several reward measures were implemented to drive engagement, celebrate success and reward students for excellent work, attendance and progress.	2,400
Parental communication	To ensure a continued communication line with parents through closure, specifically to inform them of any ‘online’ attendance concerns or updates on progress, a text message system was implemented. Texts will be sent daily to small cohorts, whole year groups and where required, whole school.	1,397

In school provision and Catch-up support:

Heading	Description/detail	Amount (£)
Academic mentor	Leeds City Academy is eligible for the Teach First Academic Mentoring programme. This programme supplies an academic tutor to the academy where only the on-costs are paid by the academy. Working with Teach First we secured a mentor to support students with deficits in learning in English. This provided students with 1:1 and small group intervention to drive forward with any subject deficits identified by teachers and leaders.	13,663
Online resources	Specifically Blended Learning platforms (GCSE Pod, Hegarty and others), resources to support home learning and intervention implementation. Support with access to electronic equipment was provided to all students who needed it. The increased access to this equipment and the ‘Home schooling resources’ enabled all students to continue with their learning during lockdown and periods of absence.	10,337
Equipment	Teaching materials were purchased to support students and minimise the barrier which changes to parental employment circumstances can provide.	4,489
Home schooling resources	Home schooling books were purchased to support the delivery during lockdown periods and during periods of isolation. The subject specific resources were delivered to all students and enabled them to continue their studies without the dependence on electronic equipment. These resources allowed a blended teaching approach to be employed. This allowed the teachers to vary their teaching strategy to best meet the needs and preferred learning styles of the students.	25,230
Pastoral support	To support students through the challenges that Covid-19 and lockdown delivered, the pastoral team took on additional tasks and additional hours to guarantee that students were supported.	8,207
Holiday intervention	To ensure students are supported in mitigating identified gaps and progress on on-going assessments, intervention and support sessions took place during the Easter and May half term breaks. These sessions involved carefully identified students and they were staffed by academy specialists.	4,974
Support workers	Safeguarding provision was delivered beyond the expected range of hours. The safeguarding staff made themselves available out of school hours and during holidays to all students who needed this valuable service.	25,200

Covid-19 Catch-up funding allocation	£63,720
LCA contribution	£36,569
Total expenditure	£100,289