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<p>To support pupils catch up, last year the Government announced a £650 million catch
up premium which aims to support schools to make up for the impact of time outside
of the classroom. The Department’s expectation is that this funding will be spent
on the additional activities required to support children and young people to catch
up after a period of disruption to their education.</p><p>Schools will receive £80
per head for mainstream schools and £240 per head for special schools and alternative
provision. We have applied additional weighting to specialist schools, recognising
the significantly higher per pupil costs they face. Schools should use this as a single
total and schools should prioritise spending based on need.</p><p>To help schools
make the best use of this funding, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has published
a support guide for schools with evidence based approaches to catch up: <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources/national-tutoring-programme/covid-19-support-guide-for-schools/#nav-covid-19-support-guide-for-schools1"
target="_blank">https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources/national-tutoring-programme/covid-19-support-guide-for-schools/#nav-covid-19-support-guide-for-schools1</a>.</p><p>The
EEF has also published a further school planning guide for 2021: <a href="https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources/guide-to-supporting-schools-planning/"
target="_blank">https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/covid-19-resources/guide-to-supporting-schools-planning/</a>.</p><p>Alongside
this, the £1 billion catch up package includes a new £350 million National Tutoring
Programme for disadvantaged pupils. This will increase access to high quality tuition
for the most disadvantaged young people, helping to accelerate their academic progress
and tackle the attainment gap between them and their peers.</p><p>The Government is
investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social
care services, including securing 1.3 million laptops and tablets for disadvantaged
children and young people. As of Monday 25 January 2021, over 870,000 laptops and
tablets had been delivered to schools, academy trusts and local authorities. We are
providing this significant injection of devices on top of an estimated 2.9 million
laptops and tablets already owned by schools before the start of the COVID-19 outbreak.</p><p>Where
pupils continue to experience barriers to digital remote education, we expect schools
to work to overcome these barriers. This could include supplementing digital provision
with different forms of remote education such as printed resources or textbooks. This
should be supplemented with other forms of communication to keep pupils and students
on track or answer questions about work.</p>
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