How children catch up on English and maths

Project

Catch Up

Funding

£395 per staff trainee covering training, resources and lifetime support, which can be paid for through pupil premium and other targeted funding

Background

One in 10 seven-year-olds are below the expected level for their age in reading and eight per cent in maths, increasing to 21 and 24 per cent respectively by age 11, according to government data from last year.

Catch Up, launched in 1998, was created by Oxford Brookes University academics Diana Bentley, Dee Reid and Suzi Clipson-Boyles in an effort to tackle reading difficulties among seven- and eight-year-olds.

In 2008, Catch Up Numeracy was launched in response to demand from schools, developed with help from Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology.

Action

Catch Up is the working name for education charity the Caxton Trust, which provides three half-day training sessions to enable teaching assistants and teachers to deliver the programme.

Schools are encouraged to send at least three staff members for training at one of the charity’s 19 regional centres in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, including someone to manage the programme. Trainers visit schools with more than 12 staff to train.

The programme starts with assessment of a child’s literacy or numeracy needs. The child then receives two 15-minute one-to-one weekly sessions, each divided into three stages.

Literacy sessions include reading and writing activities related to a book pitched at the right level for the child.

The numeracy programme, which is based on 10 core components, focuses on activities tailored to a child’s strengths and weaknesses.

“When we first introduced Catch Up Numeracy, teachers were saying, ‘our children can do all of these things’,” recalls Catch Up director Julie Lawes.

“Then in assessment, they would find the children were really weak on a couple of those areas, which was holding them back. With a bit of focused teaching, suddenly the child was able to take off.”

Support can continue for up to a year, depending on the child’s rate of progress, which is monitored weekly.

Outcome

Figures collated by the charity in 2010 show that 3,134 children aged six to 14 who received Catch Up Literacy for an average of seven months increased their reading age by around 19 months.

Meanwhile, 348 six- to 11-year-olds in 15 local authorities who received Catch Up Numeracy for around five months achieved an average maths age gain of around 11 months.

A 2015 evaluation of Catch Up Literacy by the National Foundation for Educational Research found that 286 children who took part in sessions over a 30-week transition from primary to secondary school made about two months more progress than 271 who did not take part in the programme.