The Recovery Curriculum at Church Hill C of E Junior School

On returning to school in the autumn term 2020, we at Church Hill C of E Junior School are committed to providing a short term Recovery Curriculum blended with our new, thematic curriculum. This has been designed specifically to meet the needs of our pupils and staff in response to the extraordinary circumstances brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.  

The overarching intentions of our Recovery Curriculum are as follows:

• To support the children and their families in making the transition from home learning to school based learning
• To provide a safe, compassionate and structured learning environment
• To ensure gaps in curriculum knowledge are quickly identified and filled
• To use our best endeavours to support the mental, physical and social needs of both pupils and staff

This curriculum design is based around the model of a Recovery Curriculum Loses and Levers (2020) produced by Barry Carpenter, Professor of Mental Health in Education and Matthew Carpenter, Principal of Baxter College. It identifies 5 main losses suffered by children during the COVID-19 pandemic:

1. Loss of routine
2. Loss of structure
3. Loss of friendship
4. Loss of opportunity
5. Loss of freedom

To combat these losses, Carpenter and Carpenter advocate the following 5 levers of recover which form the heart of this curriculum design.

1. Relationships
2. Community
3. Transparent curriculum
4. Metacognition
5. Space

How we will measure the impact of this curriculum

• For all children, we will use ‘Blob Trees’ resources to assess and measure the impact of the Recovery Curriculum on their wellbeing.
• For all children, we will use our formative assessments in an additional assessment cycle in September. This will provide a gaps analysis which will be used to inform our autumn term curriculum and will also highlight where more personalised learning will be necessary. The usual assessment cycles will commence from the end of the autumn term, enabling us to measure impact successfully.
• The Boxall profile will be used if needed to measure the social/emotional impact for specific individuals.
• Attendance in school to be in line with National by the end of 2021.
• Pupil, parent, staff and governor voice to reflect on the support put in place for all stakeholders.