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Catch Up is a package of materials and training produced by Oxford Brookes University that supports children's reading in Years 2 to 6. It is designed for children who are one to three years behind their ideal reading age. In Rhondda Cynon Taf they have developed a rigorous approach to delivering Catch Up in Years 2 and 3, to ensure that all children at risk of falling behind are supported, monitored, and assessed and on completion of the programme are able to keep pace with, or even overtake, their year group from. The results tell a powerful success story: last year, the average gain in reading age was 20.6 months in an academic year.
Catch Up in RCT is funded by the Basic Skills Agency's Strategic Intervention Grant – with additional funding for training. This is the fifth year of the programme and there’s an expectation that it will become embedded within core provision over time. The programme works on the basis of individual withdrawal of the pupil for ten minutes, twice a week – they get individual attention and it helps them begin to enjoy reading and to succeed alongside their peers.
There are 120 primary schools in Rhondda Cynon Taf and during 2007 101 of them are running Catch Up. Catch Up is delivered by trained Learning Support Assistants and there are workshops for parents to alert them to the strategies they can use to help support their child’s reading. The training programme is a key strength of Catch Up. Training of heads, teachers and LSAs is crucial, to ensure that all concerned are aware of the commitment needed to sustain quality. Headteachers in Rhondda Cynon Taf have rated the training and delivery model as ‘excellent’ (70%) or ‘very good’ (30%).
Headteacher of Blaengwawr Primary School, Pat Newton, agrees: ‘it’s wonderful staff development, it improves the confidence of our learning assistants – and when they see the mid-year results of the children they’re working with and see the progress, they get a huge sense of achievement. The kids love it, there’s no stigma - everyone wants to be in the Catch Up Club! It develops their confidence, and gives them skills they can use in the classroom.’ There have been some striking results – one child improved by 36 months in the 9 months of the academic year. Pat is full of praise for the support they receive from the LEA. It has been so successful that she has now involved another LSA, trained to deliver Catch Up with pupils in Years 5 and 6 who were falling behind and some of them are now reading above their chronological age.
At Perthcelyn Community Primary School Catch Up has been a great success. Each child’s progress is measured and recorded, so the evidence of progress can be tracked. Over the past four years, progress has averaged at around 20 months gain in the school year. Furthermore, looking back to 2002–03, children who were struggling in Year 3 and not expected to achieve Level 4 by Year 6, were put on a Catch Up programme, and 67% went on to gain Level 4 or 5. This is double the previous average of the Catch Up project nationally.
The Director of the national Catch Up organisation comments: ‘Rhondda Cynon Taf is one of our key local authorities, leading the way for LEAs in Wales and in England. The model of delivery used in RCT is the ‘Rolls Royce’ Catch Up model, because of the embedding strategy, training, communication and partnership elements that the team have so effectively brought together.’
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