Curriculum

Curriculum > Curriculum Catch-Up

Curriculum Catch-up and Intervention

At KGGS there is a long tradition of offering our students support or revision sessions in addition to the formal curriculum taught in timetabled lessons. Curriculum and pastoral staff monitor the progress of all students carefully to identify those who would benefit from additional help, which might be offered in or out of lessons.

In response to the challenges associated with learning during the COVID 19 Pandemic, and the inevitable knowledge gaps students have experienced, we increased our provision for curriculum catch-up significantly, building on what was already a comprehensive range of supportive interventions to ensure our learners not only make up any lost ground but also reach their potential.

Catch-up Premium

In June 2020 the government announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up on missed learning caused by coronavirus. This funding included a one-off universal £650 million catch-up premium for the 2020 to 2021 academic year to help all pupils make up for missed learning; and a £350 million National Tutoring Programme to provide additional, targeted support for those children and young people who needed the most help. Mainstream schools received £80 for each pupil from reception to year 11 inclusive.

At KGGS, we worked hard to ensure support offered to learners funded by the Catch-up Premium complimented activities and resources funded from the Pupil Premium and funding allocated for provision for Special Educational Needs and for Key Stage Five intervention.

View our Curriculum Catch-up Plan for more information about curriculum catch-up at KGGS and see how we utilised funding from the Catch-up Premium.

Amendments to the Formal Curriculum

During periods when we were locked down nationally, and all students were accessing the curriculum remotely, subject leaders amended their curricula to ensure units of work which were more accessible from home were prioritised during these periods.

Creative solutions were found for practical subjects, such as those in the Arts, PE, and Design & Technology, to ensure learners continued to hone their practical skills. And there was an increased focus on the practical aspects of these subjects when we were back in school.

Amended teaching styles, resources, and lesson delivery continues to enable students to access their timetabled lessons live via Microsoft Teams when some or all members of a class are participating remotely due to COVID-related absence.

Assessment Tools

Assessment tools featured in Microsoft Teams, such as quizzes, polls, and electronic assignment submission have enabled teaching staff to monitor the progress of all their students when working remotely for extended periods of time.

Low stakes assessment-for-learning tasks enable staff in all subjects to promptly identify students' gaps in knowledge upon their return to learning in the physical classroom.

We have also invested in additional diagnostic tools - such as those for cognitive ability and reading ages, and a web-based Lexia Reading Programme - to ensure target setting is accurate and that gaps in core skills are addressed quickly.

Key Stage Three

Curriculum Catch-up in KS3 is focused largely on the core skills which underpin the whole curriculum, such as reading, writing, and mathematics. Our aim is to ensure we identify students who are less confident in these areas or whose progress has been affected by the pandemic, so that we can put in place the right support early on.

During the summer term of 2020, we launched the KGGS Reading Project. Bringing together the work of the English Faculty, School Librarian, the SENDCo, and a newly appointed Literacy Support Lead (an additional Part Time Teacher of English) to ensure students in Years 7, 8 & 9 can access the resources, reading mentoring, and literacy-focused activities which enable them to raise their reading ages, and read and write with confidence in all their subjects.

As part of this project we have invited well-known authors into school to promote wider reading and further engage readers of all abilities with the processes of reading and writing.

An additional part time Teacher of Mathematics has enabled us to offer our KS3 mathematicians additional support in their lessons, along with small group support sessions - to give them the confidence they need to learn well in maths lessons, and in all lessons where mathematical skills are needed.

Key Stage Four & Key Stage Five

In KS4 and KS5, with the support of our Pupil Premium Leads we have utilised the National Tutoring Programme and GCSE POD to support not only those learners for whom we receive the Pupil Premium, but also any other students who needed individualised subject-specific support.

In addition to this, staff have offered a large number of out-of-lesson subject specific support and revision sessions for students in KS4 & KS5 - at lunchtimes, afterschool, and in the school holidays.