We recognise the importance of ensuring that every child receives their entitlement and comprehensive education, regardless of their attendance. When pupils are absent, they risk missing key elements of their learning journey, which can create gaps that may affect their progress. To mitigate this, we have implemented a range of targeted strategies to support catch-up during the school day.
We provide multiple ways for children to reconnect with missed learning. We aim to balance this with the ongoing demands of classroom teaching, ensuring that catch-up strategies are seamless, effective and do not detract from whole-class learning experiences.
The following methods demonstrate how we proactively address lost learning, ensuring that every child has the opportunity to achieve their potential, while nurturing resilience and confidence in their educational journey.
Teacher/Teaching Assistants:
- dedicate the first or last 15 minutes of the day to targeted children who need to catch up
- work 1-1 with the child, or with a small group including other pupils who have missed similar content or who need reinforcement in the same areas.
- work with the pupil to help them catch up in a time away from whole-class input.
- focus on recapping main concepts rather than trying to cover every missed detail, to avoid overwhelming pupils.
- include short, engaging activities that cover essential skills and knowledge in bite-sized chunks.
- focus on core subjects and learning outcomes that are essential for the year. Rather than trying to review everything missed, prioritise content that will build the strongest foundation for future learning.
- build in opportunities to revisit or reinforce missed skills during ongoing lessons.
- provide parents with key tasks that relate to the content missed by the pupil, so that they can support catch-up at home.
- direct parents back to the shared half term curriculum newsletter, so they can stay updated on topics covered in class.