We recognise that children and young people across the country have experienced unprecedented disruption to their education as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19). We are also very aware that those from the most vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds will be among those hardest hit.

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 2020-21 academic year to ensure that schools have the support they need to help all pupils make up for lost teaching time.

By scrutinizing attainment and progress data from academic year 2019-20 and identifying the gaps that have opened for some of our children both academically and socially, we have set out a plan to support the pupils to catch up.  This plan can be found here: Catch up funding plan 2020-21 , the rationale for which if based on evidence-based research.

Primarily, the grant will be spent on closing gaps in early reading, mathematics and writing across the school and on supporting pupils more holistically with their social, emotional and behaviour needs alongside their family. 

The effectiveness of this expenditure on the educational attainment of pupils chosen will be assessed in a range of ways with the impact being shown through our COVID Catch Up Premium report.

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