Ivybridge Community College Catch-up Premium 2020 - 21

In 2020-21, Ivybridge Community College was allocated funding as part of the Year 7 Catch-up Initiative.  This funding aims to help students who entered Year 7 with a SAT score of below 100 in English, (reading) or Mathematics, or both, to 'catch-up' to their peers during their first year of secondary education.  The grant is in addition to the main College budget and is used:

• to help students ‘catch-up’
• to increase the progress of identified students
• to ensure that their attainment is at least in line with their peers
• to support the transition of identified students through to their secondary phase.

The funding has been used in numerous ways to develop students’ numeracy and literacy skills.

One significant strategy is that for both Mathematics and English, there is a dedicated member of staff who looks after intervention for Year 7 students.  Some of this funding goes towards their responsibility.  Interventions for Year 7 include the close tracking and monitoring of all groups in Year 7, targeted intervention classes to support students to catch-up in their learning alongside their College classroom teachers in their department areas.

Another significant strategy used is small group teaching for three hours per fortnight for those students who need to be ‘caught up’ to their peers in both English and Mathematics. Two of these hours is led by a qualified English teacher in a small group who delivers inference style intervention sessions to Year 7 students who are below expected standard.  The remaining hour is taken by a qualified Mathematics teacher who develops basic numeracy skills to develop those skills needed in the core Mathematics lessons.  The curriculum hours for these intervention sessions are taken from Modern Foreign Languages. However, students do still follow a bespoke Modern Foreign Languages curriculum.

Students who have a SAT score of under 100 for either English or Mathematics take part in either a dedicated English or Mathematics Tutor Group once per week which is led by a dedicated English or Mathematics subject specialist.

In addition to these strategies, the following are in place:

• Withdrawal for one-to-one support
• Smaller class sizes for core lessons in Year 7
• Mentoring
• Teaching Assistant support
• Homework Club
• Literacy Intervention with Teaching Assistants
• Numeracy Intervention with Teaching Assistants
• Bedrock Vocabulary Programme
• Visiting author workshops
• Additional lessons (total of three per fortnight for identified students)

All students in Year 7 also sat the NGRT reading test which has allowed for further testing on entry to Year 7 and the tests will be repeated at the end of the year.  This has allowed the College to ensure the correct students are receiving provision and tailored intervention accordingly.

Due to the Covid-19 disruptions to our 2019-20 Catch-Up cohort we decided to extend the Catch-Up programme into Year 8.  This means that Year 8 students are still receiving the same dedicated support for an extra year.  The success of this will be evaluated at the end of the academic year to decide whether this is a process that should be repeated for the current Year 7 cohort.