Strategy Statement for additional funding

The school’s catch up priorities are also those of the Russell Education Trust. They also describe the core approaches taken, intended to help students catch up on missed learning and the overall aims of the strategy. They are

Curriculum Modification for Year 10-13

Years 11 and 13 missed significant elements of their examination courses due to lockdown.  Curriculum modification will be necessary to ensure that specification content can be covered given the restrictions of lockdown without detriment to student outcomes.

There was an impact for years 10 and 12 too as they were unlikely to be able to start their examination courses in the normal way and the impact of this had to be mitigated.

Developing the Digital Curriculum

To support our initiatives and ensure that a blended learning approach continues to be successful in the event of students having to self-isolate. In addition, our digital curriculum will enhance the future delivery all subjects, particularly those minority or shortage subjects, where staffing is shared across the trust. All students benefit from blended learning from our VLE, MS Teams, Show My Homework and other on-line tools.

Closing the Gap for Disadvantaged 

Differential engagement in learning has affected all students' learning but there are also increased gaps between students and student groups. This presents ongoing challenges during this academic year. We have particularly identified male students, those with SEND and students from a Pupil Premium (PP) background are worst affected. 

Even without COVID, the school is always mindful that an attainment gap can develop and grow during secondary education, whether for an individual or a group. A strategic aim is for us to address this and as and when it occurs. COVID requires us to work on it now to limit further impact caused by the disruption.

SEND, PP and male students need a additional support and intervention.

Additional new staff have been brought in to assist with this and additional resources have been created.

Annual SEND reviews have all included details of how students are coping (or not) and 1 page profiles have been re-written to include new strategies to support staff and students. This is being extended to students who are PP. 

Emotional & Mental Health support for students and staff.

Students and staff continue to deal with a range of emotional stress emerging directly from lockdown or indirectly because of the impact it has had on their families. Identification and support for those who need it remains a strong priority that requires additional resource in terms of staff and volunteers. 

Barriers to learning

Barriers to future attainment
Academic barriers:
A	Students in examination year groups who missed a substantial part of their teaching in normal classroom conditions are most at risk of their life chances suffering as a result of covid. In particular, this is affecting boys, SEND and PP students.
B	Students in non-examination year groups who need to catch up on missed learning.
C	Professional development needs for teachers who missed half of their initial teacher training or NQT programmes.

Additional Barriers

External barriers:
D	Attendance is a key issue. At the start of the academic year, it was particularly important to establish routines and capacity to respond to individual occasions of student absence.
E	Students who present with emotional needs, including those related to trauma, and may request access to office staff or have hardship concerns as a result of parents losing income.
F	Some families continue to have limited access to technology and broadband.

Planned expenditure for current academic year - 16-19 Tuition Funding

Additional funding has come from the ESFA (details here) for students (aged 16-19) who will benefit from small group tuition in English, Mathematics and other courses where learning has been disrupted. The funding is for those students who did not achieve Grade 5 in English or Mathematics and are currently with us in Sixth Form. The priority should be those who did not gain a Grade 4 in either English or Mathematics. 

The money provided is for the school to use to go above and beyond this typical provision so we have used the £906 to provide the following:

Action	Intended outcome and success criteria	What’s the evidence and rationale for this choice?	Staff lead	Cost
Individual tuition in Mathematics	Retake GCSE Mathematics and achieve a Grade 4	In line with funding intention and supports students in achieving most important core academic outcome	HBL/SPE	£500
Individual tuition in lowest performing A Levels	Achieve target grade in all A Level subjects	In line with funding intention and supports students in achieving success in their current courses	RPE/SWA	£406
Total budgeted cost:				£906

Additional Information

In this section we refer to additional information which we've used to support the sections above. For example:

• Evidence is available from the EEF families of schools database
• Results of parent, staff and students consultation - we have undertaken two surveys of parents, staff and students and have used these to adjust our provision. The outcomes have been shared with stake holders in our newsletters here. 
• Recent school Ofsted report - our most recent OfSTED report is available here.