Improving children’s language outcomes with the Early Years Pupil Premium

The Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) has one clear call to action: to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children. It is worth £655 per eligible child, equating to £1.15 per hour of extra funding.

In my nursery, we are using this funding to narrow the language gap for our disadvantaged children. We want to make sure that family income isn’t a barrier to their achievement or wellbeing.

I wanted to share our EYPP journey over the last three years with you to give you an insight into what we did and invite you to reflect on your own EYPP strategy.

As a team, we asked ourselves some honest questions:

• Are we identifying every family who may be eligible?

• Where are the biggest attainment gaps for our disadvantaged children?

• How can we adapt our teaching so those children with the widest gaps receive more of what they need?

The answers to these questions began our journey to improve how we invested our EYPP funding.

Professional development conversations with educators focused on how they could put their training into action.

As I walked around the nursery, I heard educators using more purposeful vocabulary.

They used a wider range of prompts, introduced new vocabulary, extended children’s phrases, and held longer serve-and-return conversations.

While playing with children, they balanced their time well and invited children to join in with purpose. Educators were supporting those children with the widest gaps in language more through play.

We introduced WellComm talk-time groups, interactive story sharing, and Early Talk Boost. We adapted circle times by grouping children based on need. Leaders and educators also focused on supporting the families of children who had the widest language gaps.

At the start of each term, we set up the physical environment using screening information. For example, if children did not have the language of size and comparison, we would provide resources in a range of sizes across all areas. In the home corner, we would include size 14 work boots, baby ballet pumps, and a variety of different-sized utensils.

To support the development of ordinal language, we added role-play items linked to familiar cooking tasks, such as making a cup of tea or a sandwich. Recently, while celebrating Eid in the home corner, Eesa showed his key worker how his mummy makes tea at home. “We drink lots of tea for Eid,” he told his key worker. His key worker was then able to introduce ordinal language by narrating the steps he took, using ‘first’, ‘next’, and ‘last’.

Over the last three years, we have seen the language gap for our disadvantaged children consistently narrow. This is reflected in both our screening data and staff feedback.

Last year, children eligible for EYPP made, on average, an additional nine months’ progress on the WellComm tracker compared to their peers, with 85% reaching age-related expectations in communication and language.

Each time we screen, key workers often knock on my office door saying, “You’ll never believe it, but…” as they share the progress children are making.

When asked about the value of WellComm, one key worker said, “I’d be lost without it. It gives me the knowledge to support each child’s specific language gaps and helps me measure whether what I’m doing is working.”

Before, we spent EYPP money on equipment or trips for specific EYPP children. Now, we invest in our adults. We know that they will make the biggest difference, if they have the right skills and mentoring to support children’s talk where it’s needed most.

Find out more about what works

• As a leader: read the EEF Guide to the Early Years Pupil Premium

• As an educator: find out more about the ShREC approach to engage young children in high-quality interactions