Last year our Haberdasher Members raised an incredible £114,000 through the Covid-19 Recovery Appeal, beating the target of £100,000.  

As much as some progress is being made to transition out of the pandemic, we are all aware of the immense challenges that continue to confront pupils and staff at this time. This fund is being shared between Haberdashers’ Academies Trust South and Haberdashers’ Abraham Darby. 

Haberdashers’ Academies’ Trust South’s CEO, Jan Shadick, says, ‘Thank you. Your giving has enabled us to provide for our most vulnerable in a way we would never have been able to. It has also given momentum to our strategic priority of supporting all pupils to achieve well.'

Here is the summary of plans for both schools:

Haberdashers' Abraham Darby

1. PRIME reading programme: to build students’ confidence in reading aloud, as well as providing further opportunities to develop reading engagement and for students to take pleasure in the carefully selected books. It is also designed to maintain the level of additional reading students are undertaking each week, as the school seeks to redress the shortfall created by the Covid-19 pandemic.
2. Year 7, 8 and 9 Cultural Capital Programme: to ensure all year 7-9 pupils are exposed to high quality out of school experiences as society opens up again. These will help foster skills in children to enhance their educational performance, help develop globally aware citizens and increase their chances of social mobility. Plans include visits to the Black Country Museum (Design Technology), Onatti Theatre (Modern Foreign Languages), planetarium shows at the WonderDome (Science) and a whole school Cultural Capital Week in the summer term. 
3. Post Covid persistent absence strategy: appoint a member of staff to target specific pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds whose attendance has fallen significantly since lockdown.

Haberdashers' Academies Trust South

1. Attendance: to engage with hard-to-reach families and pupils with high persistent absences, to ensure they are in school and learning. An additional Educational Welfare support staff member (3 days/week) will help address this quickly. 
2. Mental Health and Wellbeing: since returning to school many pupils have struggled with this issue. Additional educational psychologist support (5 days/week) will help accelerate the assessment of SEND and SEMH  and support the development and implementation of welfare interventions. 
3. Literacy strategy and catch-up programme: literacy is one of the curriculum areas that has been most impacted by the pandemic with KS1 and KS3 pupils particularly affected. KS1 pupils are less secure in phonics and more KS3 pupils are entering HATS schools with a low reading age. This will provide targeted training for teachers and the purchase of additional books to improve outcomes for pupils in reading and writing across all key stages.