Year 7 Catch-Up Funding

Year 7 Catch-up DfE Literacy and Numeracy Catch-up Premium funding provides schools with funding for students who do not achieve expected national standard in Reading and/or Maths in the National Curriculum Tests at the end of Key Stage 2. The “ring-fenced” funds are provided to all state-funded schools with a Year 7 cohort and are to be spent on a provision which enables the students to “catch-up” with their peers during the first year of Key Stage 3.

Year 7 Catch-Up 2019-20

Overview:

In 2019-20, The Macclesfield Academy received catch-up funding for 30 students in Reading.

Approximately 55% of this was used to help staff a Transition Group of 16 of these students who followed a bespoke, literacy-based curriculum. Their curriculum included intensive phonics work through the Ruth Miskin phonics programme, as well as other reading interventions and 1:1 support from Teaching Assistants. Lessons were delivered by a reading and dyslexia specialist.  Students were moved out of this group when it was deemed that they could access the curriculum in English.

Other members of the cohort attended weekly guided reading sessions in small groups. These were led by a High Level Teaching Assistant who had received further training in how to deliver lessons about inference and comprehension. Some of these sessions also involved phonics work as appropriate.

Further funding was used to train staff and run the IDL programme for struggling readers and those with dyslexia. The online programme Reading Eggs was also used with students to boost their reading ability.

Some of the funding was also spent releasing specialist staff in order to read in 1:1 targeted sessions 3 times per week during form time. Some students also read with Reading Mentors – older students who had received training in guided reading.

For students who had scored 95-99 in their KS2 tests, Quality First Teaching was the main intervention used, although these students were targeted for extra support within lessons as appropriate.

During the first lockdown, TAs worked 1:1 online with these students to ensure that they were still reading aloud at least once a week and to support them with their reading improvement.

Impact

Progress was checked through written assessments in English and also through online reading age tests at the start and end of the year.

Of the students in the cohort:

• 19 made significant progress of more than 1 year in their reading age tests between September and July of year 7
• 5 made moderate progress of around 1 year in terms of reading age between September and July of year 7
• 6 had not made adequate progress by the end-of-year reading age test (although in several of these cases this could have been down to poor attendance and poor engagement with online support during lockdown). 2 of these students, despite scoring below 100 in their KS2 test, had managed an age-appropriate score in their first reading age test so wouldn’t have been expected to make as much progress across the year

We consider that the programme put into place for year 7 was therefore a success. Those who were part of the catch-up cohort will continue to be monitored and those who did not make adequate progress in year 7 will be offered further intervention in year 8 as appropriate.