Year 7 Catch-up Premium 

With effect from the 1st June 2021, the Year 7 Catch-up Premium is withdrawn. The 2019 – 2020 academic year will be the last year in which these payments are made.

You can find the full details in our school website requirements guide.

So if your school received year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium funding for the 2019 to 2020 academic year, you should have already published the following information:

• details of how you spent your allocation for 2019 – 2020
• how your use of that allocation made a difference to the attainment of the pupils who benefited from the funding

So to confirm – the final payments for the year 7 catch-up premium were issued for the 2019 to 2020 academic year. Therefore, the 2020 to 2021 academic year will be the last year in which schools must report how the funding was used.

What is/was Year 7 Catch-up Premium?

The year 7 catch-up premium was introduced to help support students who did not achieve the expected standard in reading or maths in their key stage 2 (KS2) assessments. The funding was roughly the same level (around £500 per pupil). All state-funded schools with year 7 pupils were eligible for year 7 catch-up premium. This also included special schools and alternative provision settings.

The funding premium (as the name suggests) was only eligible for schools with year 7 students. If your school doesn’t have year 7 students, then there’s no funding, and no report to write.

The Year 7 Catch-up Premium still remains part of the statutory guidance published by the DfE at the time of writing.

The statutory guidance outlines the information that needs to be published on your school website. See the full details in our school website requirements guide.

This of course means that you should have already published these details as we are now in the 2021 – 2022 academic year. If you haven’t published this information already then this should definitely be a top priority! However, once done you will not have to worry about this requirement again. Unless the DfE re-introduces this premium or something similar.

The DfE did slightly change the requirements back in November 2020. In previous years the catch-up premium was different depending on what type of school you were from. Now it is the same for each school. The DfE also stripped back the information required. Now you only need to produce a document which includes details of how the allocation for the relevant year was spent and what difference this made to the pupils who were benefitting from the funding. Again, this is all included in the school website requirements guide.

If you haven’t already then this is how you need to report your Year 7 Catch-up Premium for 2019-20

Part 1 – How you spent the funding.

Part 2 – What difference the funding made to the pupils benefiting from the premium.

Remember keeping the previous year’s year 7 catch-up premium report on the website won’t meet the requirements. It won’t include any information about how effective the previous year’s spending was.

Year 7 catch-up Premium Compliance and More

Make sure to use the actual figures and not expected figures as the funding has been received. Make sure you complete the following points and be confident your report is complete and compliant:

• Include both complete steps of the report and add them to the website (We suggest having a Year 7 Catch-up Premium page specifically for this)
• Mark requirements as complete in your website audit tool of choice
  (We recommend the Schudio website auditor to help manage your compliance)

We have written lots of content on how to manage your school website compliance have a look at these 2 blog posts: School Website Compliance in 2021 and  Two Key Areas of Focus School Website Compliance Top Tips for 2021/22

What do I do next?

If you have any questions about the Financial Information requirement, your first port of call is the School Website Requirements Guide. To go deeper join The School Website Managers Membership where you will get access to all School Website Requirements Course updates and training. Or, drop us a line and book to have a full Ofsted Audit performed on your website.