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COVID Catch Up Premium

The impact of COVID 19 on schools has been huge and we are still working out the actual cost both emotionally and academically. Most pupils have lost around 6-9 months of school and this has led to gaps in their knowledge and skills which are not as developed as they should be. It is therefore critical that we revisit our curriculum and find out:
1. What key knowledge and skills have the pupils missed from previous school year.
2. What has been the impact of this on the children in school and how do we know?
3. How will we be catching these pupils up and do we know which specific skills they have not developed yet?
This work needs to happen at pace building on both the evidence based practice of which types of blended learning have had most impact.Our curriculum strategy, aligned with BDAT Trust this year has three strands:

1. To mitigate the lost learning of the past. This involves understanding the impact of Summer 2020 and putting in place rapid interventions to fix this though gap analysis. The bulk of this work will be done by the October half term although as you would expect in any given academic year, work on memory recall and plugging areas of gaps will continue as part of normal teaching practice.

2. Ensuring schools are delivering routine, high quality, and broad and balanced curriculums for all students by Summer 2021. This will mean ensuring all schools are delivering a challenging, quality and fit for purpose national curriculum inline with usual expectations and as previously set out prior to COVID-19 and under the expectation of the OFSTED Early Inspection Framework 2019.

3. Ensuring that the curriculum being delivered in school is also able to be delivered as robustly and consistently for any child, class or school facing a national or local lockdown. In early 2020 COVID took us by surprise. A second wave has a happened and we have taken every step to ensure our children have not been disadvantaged through further school closures. BDAT has always recognised our children only have one chance at a good education and it is vital we now quickly learn from the experiences and evidence based practice seen in Summer 2020 so we are well-prepared for the future.

Below are the plans we have put in place so far:
Covid Catch Up Plan Academy St James Autumn reviewed
The Academy at St James - Aspire, Achieve, Believe

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