Our Recovery Curriculum – Recover not Replicate
At Fairlight Primary and Nursery School, our pupil’s well-being is the priority for our curriculum as we begin our new academic year. As a school, we have thought carefully about what our curriculum should look like for our children now they have returned. We are implementing, for this period, a ‘recovery curriculum’ which acknowledges that the children will have had different experiences due to the Covid-19 situation.
Our ‘Recovery Curriculum’ has been designed to allow pupils to revisit key knowledge and ensures the children have access to a broad and balanced curriculum. We shall also focus on ensuring that the pupils are ready to learn and social and emotional learning will be prioritised. “The anxious child is not a learning child.”(Evidence for learning)
Within the first few weeks there will be a focus on the reinforcement of learning routines, our ‘School values’ and our Learning Superheroes in order to re-build relationships and re-establish a sense of belonging.
Nobody quite knows how adversely affected our children have been by the absence of daily routine which schools provide. So our recovery curriculum needs to balance how to learn best with what to learn. We have used the research of Barry Carpenter, a leading educational consultant, to plan the initial phase of our ‘Curriculum Recovery’ to ensure our Fairlight Curriculum has “uncompromising aspirations for every individual and to provide a quality of education, which is broad, balanced and challenging for all – regardless of their starting points” and that this continues to be at the forefront of our planning.
Recovery Curriculum
Our ‘Recovery Curriculum’ has been designed to support our children’s transition back into school so that they are then able to make accelerated progress in class.
(For all children)
Covid-19 ‘Catch up’
In June 2020, a £1 billion fund for education was announced by the government. Further guidance has now been released (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-catch-up-premium) showing that the money is split between a catch-up premium and a national tutoring scheme.
The catch-up premium is funded on a per pupil basis at £80 per pupil. This will be based on the previous year’s census and will not include Nursery numbers, meaning we are predicting that Fairlight will be in receipt of £26,880 (336 x £80). The spending of this money will be down to schools to allocate as they see best. To support schools to make the best use of this funding, the Education Endowment Foundation has published a support guide for schools with evidence-based approaches to catch up for all students.
At Fairlight Primary and Nursery School, this money will be used in order to provide:
There are two broad aims for “catch up” at Fairlight Primary and Nursery School:
Catch Up at Fairlight is
(For some children)
Catch up at Fairlight IS NOT