Students are identified who need extra support from the Year 7 Literacy and Numeracy Catch Up Premium.  This is an additional grant for each Year 7 student who did not achieve the expected level in reading and/or mathematics at Key Stage 2 (KS2).  The school then plans the best way to use the funding.  The school will plan provision that suits the needs of their Year 7 cohort and that fits in with strategies already used by the school to help under-performing students.  The aim of this funding is to support Year 7 students in ‘catching up’ with their peers.

In 2020/21 our funding is £23,364

We are spending this on NGRT online testing, a set of Chrome books to test reading in the library, a GL assessment, Accelerated Reader and Hegarty Maths.

In 2019-20 our funding was £23,364

We spent the catch up on maths text books for Covid-19 lockdown and NGRT testing.

In 2018 -19 our funding was £10,961

We are using a much more targeted approach. We discovered significant literacy needs and so the funding is targeted to contribute £300 to our Pixl subscription as we used Pixl Microwave for accurate baseline testing.

We have paid £2525 for Accelerated Reader. This is a scheme which we are implementing in year 7 providing us with excellent information about reading ability against age related expectations. It offers motivation to read more and has increased our progress to being a reading school. We have already bought £500 of books and reading rewards to aid implementation of the catch up aspect of our literacy strategy. We have used the  Data Managers’ time to put all of the data we now hold on Sims so that it can be accurately be used to target interventions accounting for £1,000.

We have also conducted a literacy review at a cost of £1,000 and £500 for photocopying in maths. We have also paid £1300 for Direct Instruction materials. We have also bought £500 of books suitable for EAL students. The remaining £3,336 accounts for a proportion of the cost of one HLTA for Literacy.

The impact of this year is a really accurate picture of the literacy needs of our students. The accelerated reader scheme has already shown increases of up to five years. The volume of books borrowed and purchased has significantly increased particularly in the catch up group of below age related expectations.

In the year 17-18 we received £18,173.

This was spent contributing £9,673 towards extra staffing in maths and English and £1500 was spent on Cats materials and £7000 on Doddle for that year which is a skills based assessment programme.