Covid Recovery Plans/Catch up Premium

Covid-19 Catch Up

At Hungerhill, we have created an alternative strategic action plan to identify the impact of the pandemic in our setting and to provide intervention in relation to both academic and emotional support. The action plan ran from January 2020- January 2021.

For each year group we prioritised 3 main objectives:

Objective 1: To establish the impact on learning of the multiple lockdowns and periods of enforced isolation experienced.

Objective 2: To provide an academic programme that addresses any gaps in learning as caused by the multiple lockdowns and periods of enforced isolation experienced.

Objective 3: To provide effective pastoral support for all students and address emerging SEMH needs presented by students as a result of the multiple lockdowns and periods of enforced isolation experienced.

Below is a brief overview of how Hungerhill School used Government funding to help students catch up due to Covid-19. This overview should be reviewed alongside the more detailed Covid Recovery Plans.

The effects of school closures and the lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been detrimental for all students. 

The following interventions are included in our strategic plans:

Holiday Summer Schools - KS4 students

The school has operated face-to-face and remote learning holiday provisions throughout the pandemic.  These have taken place in Summer 2020, Easter 2021, May Bank 2021, Summer 2021, October 2021 and December 2021. Further dates for 2022 will be released in the new year. The EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit references plus 3 months impact through using such methods of intervention.

Extended School Day - Year 11 Cohort 2020 and 2021

Every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday after the rest of the school have left, Year 11 students continue to work hard for an extra hour. Students have an extra lesson each of English, maths and science. The Curriculum Leaders, Mrs. Ryan, Mrs. Susca and Mrs Sprakes have all commented that the students’ approach to the sessions have shown high levels of motivation. They are sure that the extra effort will pay off and spur students to success in their GCSEs. The EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit references plus 3 months impact through using such methods of intervention.

Additional groupings in maths and English - Year 11

In addition to the after-school sessions, English and maths have created additional groups within timetabled lessons. These small groups allow for students to be provided with more direct instruction and extra teacher feedback to address gaps in learning. The EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit references plus 2 months impact through using such methods of intervention.

Daily Booster Sessions - Year 10 into Year 11 cohort 2021

5 additional tutor groups have been created for Year 11 students with a focus on English or maths. This structured intervention is to provide extra support. It is guided by the effective assessment of students’ individual strengths and weaknesses to improve knowledge and attainment.

Additional mainstream support - Year 7 English and maths

The school will still continue to fund additional interventions for Year 7 English and maths because of the gaps in learning caused by Covid-19 lockdown.

Maths: 

When students enter Hungerhill in Year 7, they are grouped according to their KS2 result, the national GL assessment and our own internal assessments. Where Key Stage 2 scores are not available this will be based on GL assessments and internal assessment.

Our Key Stage 3 Catch Up groups allow us to create a smaller class size for students of similar ability to work on targeted numeracy work. Students who are in catch up classes follow a specialised scheme of learning called Build a Mathematician (BAM). This develops student’s numeracy skills with a linked focus on literacy to ensure access to all curriculums across the school. We are passionate that this will provide the foundations required to give our students the best opportunities in the subject. The EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit references plus 2 months impact through using such methods of intervention.

We have invested in Hegarty Maths which allows students to cement and build on their learning during lesson. Students can access the website remotely to work independently and extend their learning at their own pace.

We continue to add resources to the department in order to support our Teaching for Mastery curriculum which is focussed on ensuring students gain a deeper understanding of the mathematics they are studying through, amongst other things, the use of concrete manipulatives. Students are encouraged to understand the key mathematical concepts and structures, rather than simply following procedures. As well as resourcing the department, we also invest in the development of our staff each year.

English: 

When students enter Hungerhill in Year 7, they are grouped according to their KS2 result, the national GL assessment and our own internal assessments. Where Key Stage 2 scores are not available this will be based on GL assessments and internal assessment.

This allows us to place our students who need some extra support with English into smaller groups, to allow for targeted literacy-based work.

Our Year 7 catch up classes are named Accelerate, and we use the Reciprocal Reading strategy to support our students in making rapid progress in their reading. Two of the main benefits of the strategy are the pre-teaching of vocabulary and the use of structured discussion to improve both inference and writing skills. Pre-teaching challenging vocabulary and encouraging students to dissect words and then explore them within different contexts which are more familiar to them, allows them to understand the words when they are put back into the context of the text we are reading which, in turn means they are far more likely to be able to internalise the word and then use it within their own work. The use of structured discussion builds confidence in our students, encouraging them to be more ambitious with their ideas and consider their different thoughts carefully, before committing their finished ideas to paper.

Our Curriculum Leader has worked alongside our KS3 Co-ordinator to evaluate and redesign our provision, to ensure high challenge in our lessons and resources and that additional gaps in leaning caused by lockdown have been addressed, thus enabling students to make accelerated progress towards the age-related expectations.   

KS3 additional reading programme- Accelerated Reader

This intervention aims to equip students with reading and writing skills that can continue to be built throughout their secondary school experience. 

It supports all students to address any gaps caused by multiple lockdowns, but it is especially beneficially for those students whose attainment in literacy is below average, and whose confidence as readers is low.  The increasingly challenging and academic range of reading can be a struggle and this intervention provides the skills to develop key areas of reading acquisition.

Covid-19 wellbeing package 

We have created a wellbeing package, to help improve how we respond to the emotional impact of the coronavirus pandemic on our students and staff. This addresses the additional pressures some young people may be feeling as a direct result of the pandemic, as well as to any emotional response they or their teachers may still be experiencing from bereavement, stress, trauma or anxiety over the past months.