Targeted Academic Support

At the start of this academic year, the government released notification to all schools in England that, following the introduction of the National Tutoring Programme (NTP) last March, schools would have the opportunity to run their own 'Catch-up' programme. Here at King James's School we have adopted the opportunity to run the programme 'in house' as we feel that our committed teaching staff know their students best and can tailor their support to their individual needs.

How progress is measured

Students' individual prior attainment data is used as a baseline to track their expected progress in all year groups. If a student has been identified as not making the progress their prior attainment data suggests that they should following a progress data input, the member of teaching staff who teaches the student is expected to ensure that appropriate interventions are made to get the student back on track.

Possible intervention strategies are detailed in the table below:

Effective Lesson Planning

Intervention Strategy	Detail
Assessment for Learning	ensuring that the students who are not making the required progress have a clear understanding of what it is that they need to learn and evidence about their current level of performance, so that they can close the gap
Making things manageable	breaking the learning down into manageable chunks/steps, so the road ahead appears less daunting and targets achievable
Exam success	providing clarity and detail regarding how to succeed in your exam(s)
Use of effective feedback	it should be about: About challenging tasks or goals (rather than easy ones); Given sparingly (i.e. needs to be meaningful); About what is right more than what is wrong; as specific as you can and if possible, compare what they are doing right now with what they have done wrong before; encouraging students and not a threat to their self-esteem
Students encouraged to think more explicitly about how they learn	Strategies to ensure that students think more explicitly about how they learn in the classroom and providing opportunities for them to discuss/articulate this and, subsequently, apply it to their independent work

Classroom Organisation

Intervention Strategy	Detail
Ability grouping	a departmental approach to ensure that students of similar ability with the same progress issues receive targeted intervention
Classroom organisation	ensuring students are placed in seats that encourage learning
Positive Behaviour policy	strong use of the policy, but with an emphasis on how their behaviour is impacting on (their own) learning, rather than simply as a sanction

Outside the Classroom

Intervention Strategy	Detail
Peer tutoring/peer-assisted learning strategies
One-to-one tutoring	Students are identified for additional one-to-one support in timetabled lesson time.
Access to digital technologies	Providing direct access to digital technologies to support learning
Focused homework	providing tasks to support areas of weakness
Required participation in after-school programmes	achieved by identifying specific areas of weakness for students and targeting support through the delivery of tailored content

Relationships

Intervention Strategy	Detail
Unrelenting positive focus on subject	ensuring a climate in which students are continuously encouraged to think positively about the subject, how to improve and never allowed to opt out
Identifying barriers	knowing the specific barriers to each child making good progress
Parent involvement to support students’ learning	achieved by establishing and maintaining a dialogue with the parents of under-achieving students, so that they can lend support in ensuring that students enjoy an environment and ethos conducive to learning
Conversations with students about their work	ensuring positive engagement with you and the subject and discussion about how performing well will benefit them in the future

King James's School