Catch Up Curriculum | St Oswalds Catholic Primary School

Catch Up Curriculum Statement

At St Oswald’s Catholic Primary School, we are absolutely determined that no child’s education will suffer as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Wellness Weeks

When the children returned to school, we focused upon their wellbeing and physical health. We taught the children about how to keep safe and our new rules to do this and prioritised activities to allow them to reflect on their time since we last met.

The intention of the Wellbeing Weeks at the start of the term was to allow children to express themselves fully, to help teachers recognise any areas of concern, and to easily identify necessary support, if required. We have two dedicated family support officers who were on hand, and continue to be, to support children and staff.

We fully understood that children may need some time to settle down and become used to school routines as some of them had not been in school since March, but children are often more resilient than we think. Over 600 children returned to St Oswald’s in September; they settled brilliantly, are happy and are already working hard in RE, phonics, maths, English, science, computing and PE.

Academic Curriculum

We recognise that children will have accessed varying amounts of the school’s remote learning offer during lockdown. Children in all year groups may have missed out on parts of the curriculum, so our initial task was to assess children’s learning. What gaps, if any, do they demonstrate in their learning? What key skills and knowledge do they not have from the previous terms curriculum? What do they know and remember? What do they need to work on in order to progress their learning? What is the crucial knowledge that we need to build into our planning for this term and beyond?

Our approach was to begin by focusing upon the core subjects first – to build up a timetable around the introduction of these subjects, whilst retaining all the five elements of wellness. Careful short term plans were then be made by subject leaders and their teams on bespoke approaches based upon what our children need (see visions and COVID response plans below).

It is important to recognise that each subject’s catch up curriculum is different because the national curriculum is written in different ways depending on the subject. Some subjects are written for year groups and others are to be covered in upper or lower key stages (i.e. year 3/4 and year 5/6). Some subjects have a statement for elements that need to be covered over a key stage. Some knowledge, skills and understanding will be essential for next step learning and therefore will need to be taught prior to a new element in a new year group. Some key elements will be revisited as part of the subject’s scheme of work.

Wider Foundation Curriculum Subjects

We expect to be rapidly progressing to covering most, if not all, of the subjects in the first half term. We believe that children should continue to receive a full education and will do our utmost to keep it broad and balanced. Some foundation subject catch up may be accessed via geography days, art weeks and themed events. Again, each subject team will plan a bespoke catch-up curriculum covering all missed objectives and skills which will be shared with our school community via our website.

Regular Reviews

As part of our catch up curriculum, we have built-in regular opportunities to monitor and review how things are going which will inform our medium and long term plans.

Catch Up Funding

The government have pledged extra money to support us in plugging any Coronavirus related gaps. We will keep you informed about how we intend to use this money to support our children, this will be decided once all assessment has been completed and areas of need prioritised.

Catch Up Curriculum Visions