Our GCSE results have shown significant improvement over the last few years and Platanos College is now one of the top-performing schools in the country.
Year 7 Catch-Up Premium
The literacy and numeracy catch-up premium allocated by the Department for Education (DfE) gives schools additional funding to support Year 7 pupils who did not achieve the expected standard in reading or maths at the end of Key Stage 2 (KS2).
In the 2019-2020 academic year, the amount allocated to the school was £15,455. This was the last year of the funding.
PROGRAMMES
The funds are used in a targeted manner to ensure that those pupils entitled to the Premium receive tailored support appropriate to their literacy and numeracy needs.
The programmes of support include the following:
- Additional support and tuition in small groups and, where appropriate, one-to-one teaching.
- Identified pupils also benefited from nurture groups in Key Stage 3, which is similar to a primary-style teaching approach. This concentrates on basic skills to enable ‘catch-up’ to take place.
- Learning Mentors to support learning needs.
- Our Learning Support Unit (LSU) provides targeted support for the under-performing pupils.
- Additional homework support and extracurricular clubs.
- Purchase of specific resources to aid learning (e.g. Toe by Toe programme; Cutting Edge programme; Accelerated Reader).
- Residential trips to aid learning, skills development and the secondary transition process.
THE IMPACT
The support programmes for eligible pupils resulted in a positive impact:
- Increased progress in literacy with an increase in the reading ages of pupils.
- The vast majority of eligible Y7 pupils made the expected progress in English and Maths at the end of the academic year and was comparable to their peers.
- Increased pupil confidence in reading and numeracy.