sarah707
05-02-2015, 07:02 PM
The purpose of the Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) is to raise the achievement of disadvantaged children. There is a guide to the pupil premium for Local Authorities here – https://www.gov.uk/early-years-pupil-premium-guide-for-local-authorities.
The guide covers how money should be spent by the Local Authority – which children will be eligible to receive the EYPP based on factors such as family income and family circumstances. Only children who receive the free funded hours will be able to claim the funding from the age of 3.
If you think a child is eligible for EYPP (they had a free 2 year space… they are now 3… parents are low income or qualify in another way) you should encourage parents to speak to the Local Authority to find out whether they can claim the funding for their child. You can make the initial contact on their behalf – but make sure they know you are doing it for them.
The EYPP rate is 53p per hour the child is with you for the free funding hours … so if you deliver all 570 free funded hours a year you will receive £302.10 for the year. The funding payment will be split into 3 - 1 payment of £100 (maximum if the child receives all their funded hours with you) per term.
The funding is for the child – not the provider – and it has to be used in a way that can be clearly shown to have raised outcomes for the child. In other words, the provider will have to justify how the money has been spent to their LA and Ofsted will inspect us on how it's been spent.
Suggestions for spending the money include, for example –
• Providers might organise staff training to support the child – a behaviour management course if that's an issue - or speech and language course or Makaton perhaps;
• A pre-school might purchase some communication and language or physical development resources to benefit the child;
• A childminder might purchase resources which can be loaned to the child’s family at the weekend to support the child’s learning at home;
• A nursery might use the money to employ a better qualified member of staff than currently in the child’s room who is qualified in a specialism which will support the child who receives the EYPP;
• A nursery might bring in a chef and run a term of healthy eating sessions if appropriate nutrition and lack of awareness of healthy eating has been recognised as an area of concern for the child. Resources such as recipes could then be passed on to parents to support home learning;
• Children’s basic needs might be prioritised - for example, meals might be provided for the child with some of the money used to purchase food if providers know that the child is arriving without breakfast and is not offered a healthy lunch when they leave the provision to go home;
• Providers might pay for a specialist to come into the provision and work with the child one-to-one on an area of learning recognised as a concern during part of their session: for example, engaging the child through music and movement sessions or storytelling;
• Resources might be purchased for the child that will support their learning in the provision ...
The rules for EYPP funding state that if you get an inadequate Ofsted grading you will lose any EYPP funding you receive at the time. This is to be expected as funding is lost if a provider receives an inadequate grading.
Most importantly, providers must be able to show that they have used the EYPP to –
• Prepare the child for school
• Narrow the gap in attainment between disadvantaged children and their peers.
Inspecting the effectiveness of the way the EYPP has been spent is embedded in the new inspection framework which will be used from September this year – providers who have received EYPP for their funded children will be inspected on the effective use of the funding and the impact the funding has made to outcomes for the child.
To make the judgement (which will go into the ‘Leadership and Management’ section of the Ofsted report), inspectors will want to know see clear evidence that the funding has been used to improve children’s outcomes – short and long term – and evidence in children’s documentation to show that outcomes have already been raised for the child.
We have no idea how individual Ofsted inspectors will judge providers on the ways they have spent the funding. Pre-school learning alliance (PLA), Pacey and the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) have stated that they are concerned clear guidance is not currently in place for Ofsted inspectors and are lobbying for this to be written and inspectors properly trained. There is also a concern that inspectors might focus solely on, for example, numeracy rather than looking at the whole child and recognising that their social skills have been supported or that providers have spent a term working on and significantly impacting on them behaving appropriately in a group.
Further guidance on how the funding might be used to support children and how evidence might be shown that the funding has impacted on outcomes for the child will be made available over the coming months as trials already in place in some LAs are evaluated.
According to the following Nursery World article, current studies related to how the EYPP is being effectively used to raise outcomes for children are focussing on –
• Support for early literacy and numeracy development;
• How the home learning environment can be enhanced;
• Improving parental engagement;
• Enhancing professional development, qualifications and leadership.
I think this gives us an early clue as to how the impact of how the funding has been spent might be judged.
This is still very new news and we are learning more as Government reports are written and Ofsted release further information. We have both PLA and Pacey lobbying on behalf of early years providers including childminders with an aim to bring clarity to how spending will be judged and the inspection process will change. PLA, Pacey and the NCB are asking for DfE to publish good practice examples for practitioners to use when deciding how best to spend the money.
We need to keep an eye on reports as they come out to help us understand the funding, how it might be used and how we will be expected to show evidence that it has been used effectively during the years between inspections.
Sarah Neville / Knutsford Childminding, 02.2015
Further reading
Nursery World article: Plans for judging use of EYPP cause concern | Nursery World (http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/nursery-world/news/1147825/plans-judging-eypp-cause-concern).
Questions raised about the funding by NCB: http://www.ncb.org.uk/media/1159514/140822_ey_pupil_premium.pdf.
Some of the imaginative and successful ways the Pupil Premium has been used in schools are detailed in this Guardian article and can be easily translated for an early years child: How should schools spend the pupil premium? | Teacher Network | The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/jul/22/how-schools-spend-pupil-premium).
The guide covers how money should be spent by the Local Authority – which children will be eligible to receive the EYPP based on factors such as family income and family circumstances. Only children who receive the free funded hours will be able to claim the funding from the age of 3.
If you think a child is eligible for EYPP (they had a free 2 year space… they are now 3… parents are low income or qualify in another way) you should encourage parents to speak to the Local Authority to find out whether they can claim the funding for their child. You can make the initial contact on their behalf – but make sure they know you are doing it for them.
The EYPP rate is 53p per hour the child is with you for the free funding hours … so if you deliver all 570 free funded hours a year you will receive £302.10 for the year. The funding payment will be split into 3 - 1 payment of £100 (maximum if the child receives all their funded hours with you) per term.
The funding is for the child – not the provider – and it has to be used in a way that can be clearly shown to have raised outcomes for the child. In other words, the provider will have to justify how the money has been spent to their LA and Ofsted will inspect us on how it's been spent.
Suggestions for spending the money include, for example –
• Providers might organise staff training to support the child – a behaviour management course if that's an issue - or speech and language course or Makaton perhaps;
• A pre-school might purchase some communication and language or physical development resources to benefit the child;
• A childminder might purchase resources which can be loaned to the child’s family at the weekend to support the child’s learning at home;
• A nursery might use the money to employ a better qualified member of staff than currently in the child’s room who is qualified in a specialism which will support the child who receives the EYPP;
• A nursery might bring in a chef and run a term of healthy eating sessions if appropriate nutrition and lack of awareness of healthy eating has been recognised as an area of concern for the child. Resources such as recipes could then be passed on to parents to support home learning;
• Children’s basic needs might be prioritised - for example, meals might be provided for the child with some of the money used to purchase food if providers know that the child is arriving without breakfast and is not offered a healthy lunch when they leave the provision to go home;
• Providers might pay for a specialist to come into the provision and work with the child one-to-one on an area of learning recognised as a concern during part of their session: for example, engaging the child through music and movement sessions or storytelling;
• Resources might be purchased for the child that will support their learning in the provision ...
The rules for EYPP funding state that if you get an inadequate Ofsted grading you will lose any EYPP funding you receive at the time. This is to be expected as funding is lost if a provider receives an inadequate grading.
Most importantly, providers must be able to show that they have used the EYPP to –
• Prepare the child for school
• Narrow the gap in attainment between disadvantaged children and their peers.
Inspecting the effectiveness of the way the EYPP has been spent is embedded in the new inspection framework which will be used from September this year – providers who have received EYPP for their funded children will be inspected on the effective use of the funding and the impact the funding has made to outcomes for the child.
To make the judgement (which will go into the ‘Leadership and Management’ section of the Ofsted report), inspectors will want to know see clear evidence that the funding has been used to improve children’s outcomes – short and long term – and evidence in children’s documentation to show that outcomes have already been raised for the child.
We have no idea how individual Ofsted inspectors will judge providers on the ways they have spent the funding. Pre-school learning alliance (PLA), Pacey and the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) have stated that they are concerned clear guidance is not currently in place for Ofsted inspectors and are lobbying for this to be written and inspectors properly trained. There is also a concern that inspectors might focus solely on, for example, numeracy rather than looking at the whole child and recognising that their social skills have been supported or that providers have spent a term working on and significantly impacting on them behaving appropriately in a group.
Further guidance on how the funding might be used to support children and how evidence might be shown that the funding has impacted on outcomes for the child will be made available over the coming months as trials already in place in some LAs are evaluated.
According to the following Nursery World article, current studies related to how the EYPP is being effectively used to raise outcomes for children are focussing on –
• Support for early literacy and numeracy development;
• How the home learning environment can be enhanced;
• Improving parental engagement;
• Enhancing professional development, qualifications and leadership.
I think this gives us an early clue as to how the impact of how the funding has been spent might be judged.
This is still very new news and we are learning more as Government reports are written and Ofsted release further information. We have both PLA and Pacey lobbying on behalf of early years providers including childminders with an aim to bring clarity to how spending will be judged and the inspection process will change. PLA, Pacey and the NCB are asking for DfE to publish good practice examples for practitioners to use when deciding how best to spend the money.
We need to keep an eye on reports as they come out to help us understand the funding, how it might be used and how we will be expected to show evidence that it has been used effectively during the years between inspections.
Sarah Neville / Knutsford Childminding, 02.2015
Further reading
Nursery World article: Plans for judging use of EYPP cause concern | Nursery World (http://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/nursery-world/news/1147825/plans-judging-eypp-cause-concern).
Questions raised about the funding by NCB: http://www.ncb.org.uk/media/1159514/140822_ey_pupil_premium.pdf.
Some of the imaginative and successful ways the Pupil Premium has been used in schools are detailed in this Guardian article and can be easily translated for an early years child: How should schools spend the pupil premium? | Teacher Network | The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/jul/22/how-schools-spend-pupil-premium).