In 2020-21 the government provided £80 funding per child to support children to catch up lost learning time following the COVID19 related school closures. 

Schools were and continue to be able to choose how best to use their funding; to support schools to make the best use of this funding, the Education Endowment Foundation published support guides for schools, providing evidence-based approaches to catch up for all students.

The EEF guide to Supporting School Planning shares the best available evidence, referring to existing EEF guidance reports along with school case studies, to aid school leaders in choosing the most appropriate strategies to address issues caused by the pandemic and allow pupils to catch up at the quickest possible rate.

When deciding how best to use the funding we received at Dove Holes CE Primary School, we considered evidence from the EEF, our understanding of individual levels of engagement with remote learning, our school context data and our observations and assessments of the children once they had settled back into school life. We identified a number of barriers to learning caused by school closure due to Covid-19, which can be seen below:

• Some children have specific gaps in maths in areas that were missed during closure but also in knowledge that was not secure prior to closure.
• Some children are experiencing difficulty with writing in areas of stamina, punctuation, grammar and handwriting.
• Some children have gaps in their phonic knowledge, affecting their spelling and reading.
• Some children have specific gaps in wider curriculum areas that were missed during closure, covered remotely and may not have been secure prior to closure.
• Some children have reduced focus and resilience in the classroom setting.
• Some children are finding the return to the school environment more challenging.
• Although school worked hard to provide devices, support and in school places for pupils to access the high quality remote learning provision, some children had limited access to remote learning and/or a greater level of adult support, meaning some content covered during this period was not as secure.
• Even with full engagement, home learning is not able to entirely replicate quality first classroom-based teaching as it is more challenging to achieve individual feedback and group work.