Coronavirus Catch-up Premium

Purpose

The government announced 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.

Implementation

The funding will be used to fund specific activities to support ourpupils to catch up for lost teaching over the previous months, in line with the curriculum expectations for the next academic year. We are expected to use this funding for specific activities which will help pupils catch up on missed education, and guidelines have been produced on the GOV.UK to facilitate that. Our plans for the use of our funding for Years 7 to 11 are outlined in the “Use of Coronavirus Catch-up” PDF linked below.

Sixth Form Statement

St John’s seeks to provide an excellent standard of education for all our students. During lockdown we appreciate that some groups of students were more adversely affected than others by the government measures. The 16-19 catch-up fund aims to help redress some of this inequality by targeting funding towards students who did not gain a GCSE grade 5 in English and/ or Maths and asks that school’s prioritise students without grade 4.

All St John’s students gained a grade 4 in English but 15 of our current Y12 students do not have a grade 4 in Maths. We are supporting these students in two ways. Firstly, through targeted Maths support to help prepare them for the November exam. After the November exams, we will reassess the need and provide tailored revision in small groups, workbooks and resources. We will also investigate the use of Maths mentors for this group.

Secondly, we are supporting this group of students where they need additional support in other subjects. We are targeting applied subjects with January exams as this will be the first experience of external exams for these students. For Cambridge Sport we are running a day of support where students can work in small groups preparing for the exams. We will also support by providing a tailored revision pack for this day.

As the amount allocated for Sixth form is small, we will continue to review how it is spent to support the eligible students.