What is it?

The Literacy and Numeracy catch-up premium gives state-funded schools, including special schools and alternative provision settings, additional funding to support year 7 pupils who did not achieve the expected standard in reading or Maths at the end of key stage 2.

2018-2019 allocation
In the 2018-2019 academic year, St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School received £12,000 in catch up funding.

How the funding was spent and the impact on Literacy and Numeracy
Literacy

To support reading and develop literacy, we invested in the Lucid software to improve our understanding of the specific needs of the students. This also enabled more effective quality first teaching based on the tests’ findings.

All students who attained below the expected standard in their KS2 reading tests accessed one of the following:

• one-to-one work on phonics.
• one-to-one work on spellings.
• small group work on reading comprehension.
• one-to-one, paired and small group “Read to Succeed” sessions.

In response to the data from 2017-18 we increased the amount of one-to-one support available and introduced a paired reading scheme whereby Sixth Form students work alongside Year 7 students to improve reading skills and oracy.

Students were then re-tested at the end of the year to assess the impact of the work. The majority of students made significant progress in terms of both word recognition and reading comprehension as a result of the interventions they received. Those students who failed to make significant progress as a result of these programmes have continued to receive small group and one-to-one support into Year 8.

Numeracy
To support numeracy, we assessed the pupils using the Progress in Maths tests and used this to benchmark our interventions and to establish a competency profile for each student. Depending on their specific need, every student who had failed to reach the expected standard at the end of KS2 was then matched to the most appropriate intervention, either:

• one-to-one support on all areas of Mathematics
• small group work focusing on fractions, decimals and percentages, and picking up key pre-requisites for the work they were working on in class.

The group who received the one-to-one sessions made excellent progress: all students saw an improvement in their raw scores when retested using the PIM assessment with an average increase of 2.0. 66%

We also saw significant improvements in raw scores, all of the students showed significant number age increases, of between 12 and 24 months over the 5 months of the intervention.

In the small group sessions, 55.6% of students made significant progress when re-tested on the key elements of fractions, decimals and percentages. 33.3% made some improvement, while 11% made no progress in these areas. These students will continue to receive numeracy interventions into Year 8.

2019-2020 allocation
This academic year, St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School expect to receive £12,000 (t.b.c).

How this year’s funding will be allocated:

Literacy
To further support reading and develop literacy, we will maintain all the interventions and initiatives identified earlier in the document. The Reading for Success programme has been extended to cover 20 students when previously it was 10.

Year 7 students will also be involved in a variety of whole school literacy events, these include Year 7 World Book Day where each tutor group in Year 7 chooses a book and plans their costumes for the day. There are also poetry competitions every term where Year 7 students can write and read out their own poetry. All these activities include discussion and engagement with reading and literacy as well as raising the profile across the school.

Numeracy
To further support and develop numeracy, we will assess the pupils using the Progress in Maths tests and this is then used to benchmark our interventions and to establish a competency profile for each student. Depending on their specific need, every student who had fails to reach the expected standard at the end of KS2 will then be matched to the most appropriate intervention, either:

• one-to-one support on all areas of Mathematics and picking up key pre-requisites for the work they are working on in class. This will boost confidence in their maths classes and enable a two pronged learning approach on similar subjects, to better the pupil’s relationship with the subject and revision.
• small group work focusing on fractions, decimals and percentages, and picking up key pre-requisites for the work they are working on in class. This will boost confidence in their maths classes and enable a two pronged learning approach on similar subjects, to better the pupil’s relationship with the subject and revision.