Catch Up Premium

At Cardinal Allen, we believe that every child, regardless of background or social deprivation, should have equal opportunities for success. As such, we use Catch Up Premium funding to overcome any barriers to achievement for our year seven pupils who did not achieve the expected standard in reading or maths at the end of key stage 2.

The ‘Catch-Up’ premium was formally launched in March 2013 as part of a commitment to provide additional funding to support Year 7 pupils entering secondary education without the essential foundation skills in literacy (communication) or numeracy. Schools are expected to use this extra funding to finance the delivery of initiatives aimed at accelerating progress and closing the identified skills gap.

Although the premium was originally allocated to individual pupils who failed to gain a Level 4 in Reading and/or Maths, the system of funding allocation was revised along with the introduction of the new KS2 SAT examinations in 2016. The amount secondary schools received was frozen at the previous year’s level, regardless of changes in transition year demographics.

Additionally, the government provided no official guidance on baseline SAT scores. Although schools were informed that a standardised score of 100 was the expected score, there was no indication of the score which indicated significantly below (or above) expectation. Therefore, who to target with the additional funding was devolved to individual schools.