Early Years Pupil Premium

Early Years Pupil Premium

Since April 2015, nurseries, schools, childminders and other childcare providers have been able to claim extra funding through the Early Years Pupil Premium to support children’s development, learning and care.

National data research tells that children eligible for free school meals tend to do less well, than other children. The Early Years Pupil Premium is to provide us with extra funding to close this gap.

The Early Years Pupil Premium provides an extra 53 pence per hour for three and four year old children whose parents are in receipt of certain benefits or who were formally in local authority care but who have left care because they were adopted or were subject to a special guardianship or child arrangements order. This means an extra £302 a year for each child taking up the full 570 hours funded entitlement to early education. This additional money makes a significant difference to us.

We can use the extra funding in any way we choose to improve the quality of the early year’s education that we provide for your child. This year we have noticed that many children have speech and language difficulties, so we will spend some of the EYPP funding to support and further develop children's language. We have also noticed that some of our children miss opportunities to take part in physical activities, particularly outdoors, so this is another area that we want to develop. Other things we are using our EYPP money for is building relationships and engagement with parents and improving attendance for children from disadvantaged families.

It is well documented that high quality early education can influence how well a child does at both primary and secondary school so we do want to make the most of this additional funding. You may be aware if you have older children that a pupil premium has been available in school age children and it has proved to have given a real boost to the children receiving the funding. We want to do the same for our early years children entitled to this funding.

A return is submitted to the local authority for eligibility to be checked, we receive the results approximately a month following submission. This enables us to confirm the children within the setting who are eligible.