Coronavirus (COVID-19) catch-up funds

Funding for catch-up has changed significantly since the early days of the pandemic and continues to evolve. This page therefore focuses on how we have used the funds at Woodford and what we intend to do with them during the academic year 2022-23

Up to the end of the academic year 2021-22 funding had been used for the following:

• Paying teachers to deliver catch-up sessions to identified groups or subjects out of normal school hours (normally on weekends or during school holidays).
• To pay for external tutoring or coaching of small groups of students where this cannot be provided by the existing teaching staff.
• To pay for external examination preparation workshops to supplement those already delivered in school - particularly important in 2022 when the first set of external examinations since 2019 were being prepared for.
• Purchase of resources, such as texts and study guides, to make up for lost learning or to aid understanding of missed practical work.
• To pay for additional counselling in order to increase our support of vulnerable students and others whose mental health has been adversely affected by the pandemic and lock-down.
• To pay for tailored sessions in order to smooth transition points, especially transfer from primary school, to Year 7 and induction into the Sixth Form.
• To pay for the additional costs incurred as a consequence of opening the school outside normal hours (eg caretakers’ overtime).

How The Effect Of Expenditure On Educational Attainment Was Assessed.

In large part the programme was judged a success if the pupils involved in achieving broadly the same outcomes that we would expect if the pandemic had not intervened. This was assessed by scrutiny of:

• Work produced in lessons, exercise books etc.
• Pupil engagement in lessons and their ability to answer questions and problem solve.
• Internal examination and assessment grades.
• Feedback from students about their confidence levels in their academic subjects.
• GCSE and A Level grades 2022.

Our evaluation so far suggests that the programme of support has been a success. We were especially pleased to note the extremely good results achieved at both GCSE and A Level in 2022. In many cases these were even better than the grades that had been achieved when using Centre Assessed Grades in 2020 and 2021.

Our Plans For 2022-23

Although we will still use some of the residual funding for resources aimed at aiding catch-up where needed, our main focus will be on additional tuition. The vast majority of this tuition will be subject-specific and delivered in-house, although where necessary we shall also utilise external providers.

We have used a combination of assessment data and feedback from subject and pastoral staff to determine who to target for tuition. Tuition will be delivered either one-to-one or in small groups. Where we are doing this in-house it will take place in-person, largely after school, although occasionally on weekends. Most of the bought-in tuition is delivered virtually.

The first tranche of 10 or 15 weeks of tuition commences in September. A second tranche will be delivered in the spring term. This second tranche will be aimed at those who we decide require further support, or of those who could not be accommodated in the first tranche. The examination years (11 and 13) have been prioritised for this tuition, but it has not been targeted exclusively at them and other students will also benefit.

We shall review efficacy as the year progresses using similar data to that listed above.