K.U.N.C.U.

(Keep Up Not Catch Up)

(Clive Davies – Focus Education)

At Cheadle Primary School we have implemented the principles of K.U.N.C.U. as we believe in aiming high and reaching for the stars.

The main principle of K.U.N.C.U. is ‘believing almost all pupils can attain the expected standard for their age’. It puts a great deal of focus on how to make intervention work by ensuring pupils are keeping up not catching up. In addition, it considers how to improve outcomes for more able learners, ensuring higher percentages are attaining greater depth. It will look at these issues from Early Years through to Year 6.

K.U.N.C.U. will:

· Emphasise the importance of creating a ‘whole-school’ ethos that embraces the principles that almost all pupils are capable of attaining the national expectations for their age;

· We are trying to create a vision where intervention is about pupils keeping up not catching up

· We are relentless in our determination that no pupil will fall behind

· We try to ensure that all pupils are provided with every opportunity to ensure that they ‘keep up’ with the curriculum and meet or exceed the end of year expectations;

We focus on aspects such as:

· Corrective teaching – ensuring rapid intervention when needed – trying to plug gaps of knowledge on which to build pupils’ learning using a solid foundation of knowledge

· Pre-teaching – teaching a concept to pupils that would benefit from it prior to whole class teaching

· Same day intervention where possible – during ERIC time first thing in the afternoon and/or during lessons

· Reviewing teacher assistants’ role – trying to use every minute to make a difference

· Effective marking and feedback – for pupils to self-assess or peer-assess their work so that they have instant feedback of their understanding

· Making greater use of working or learning walls – encouraging our pupils to use displays within their learning environments

· Providing a monitoring framework which focuses on the learning and not the teaching as a way to assess the quality of the provision in classrooms.