Why strategy is more important than resources when using the Early Years Pupil Premium to close learning gaps

Within our nurseries, one question comes up time and again: how can we use Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) funding in a way that genuinely closes learning gaps?

As a team of early years leaders across three maintained nurseries in North Somerset, we have been using the EEF Guide to the Early Years Pupil Premium to challenge our strategic thinking around EYPP spending.

We wanted to be honest with ourselves about whether our previous decisions were truly improving outcomes for children from lower-income backgrounds.

Maybe you’re also grappling with the same question?

We used a step-by-step approach to plan, deliver and sustain our strategy as part of a balanced approach. The balanced approach combines:

• Developing quality practice across the whole setting, which delivers the greatest benefits for children from lower income backgrounds

• Tailoring support in response to children’s needs

• Embedding changes to practice over time.

Using the key principles of a balanced approach, we collaborated across our three nurseries to develop our EYPP strategy, informed by findings from high-quality research.

Developing quality practice Children from lower-income backgrounds benefit from high-quality education and careHigh-quality education and care refers to the quality of educators’ day-to-day interactions that support children’s development and the care they experience.. To strengthen quality, we needed to develop the knowledge, skills and practice of our whole team.

Planning, designing and delivering our own professional development Evidence-informed professional development is a well-proven way to improve quality and benefit eligible children. We used the Early Years Evidence Store to support our planning and design, focusing on approaches most likely to improve outcomes.

Reflecting on past, current and future EYPP spending choices We had previously invested in high-quality resources, but we asked ourselves whether these were being used effectively. Were educators using them to provide better interactions, experiences and scaffolding for children from lower-income backgrounds? Or were they simply new additions to the environment without a clear strategy behind them?

This reflection helped us recognise that resources alone were unlikely to close learning gaps without a strong focus on pedagogy and practice.

Next, we moved on to think about what actions we needed to take.

Our assessments showed that many of our children from lower-income backgrounds needed additional support with communication and language. This became a clear priority for our EYPP strategy.

As a team, we identified missed opportunities within daily story times for educators to develop children’s communication and language skills.

We therefore chose to implement the evidence-informed approach of interactive reading, supporting educators to ‘upgrade’ story times so that children were less passive and more actively involved in shared reading with an adult.

Jay is listening to his key person read the core book ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. Although Jay has listened to the story being read before, it was on this occasion that Jay was able to listen and attend to the whole story, with no adult support. It was also the first time he engaged with the repeated refrains of the story, for example, when his key person used a completion prompt, he said “going on a bear hunt”, “big one”, “uh oh”. His key person noted that this was progress that she had not observed before and that he was now an active participant in the ‘reading’ of the book.

Once we saw the impact of those changes, we needed to make sure we embedded them in our everyday practice.

The Guide to Effective Professional Development in the Early Years  helped us consider how to provide sustained support for our teams. We ensured educators had time to practise new teaching techniques, receive peer support and feedback, and set personal goals reviewed through ongoing professional conversations.

After following this structured process, we decided to allocate some EYPP funding to purchase a wider range of high-quality picture books.

This time, however, we were confident that investing in resources would contribute to closing learning gaps because it sat alongside:

• an evidence-informed approach such as interactive reading

• professional development and ongoing support for educators

• regular monitoring to ensure the approach was embedded

• the use of an early language screening tool, such as WellComm, to check that eligible children were making progress in communication and language

Our experience has reinforced that EYPP funding can have the greatest impact when it is used as part of a balanced, evidence-informed strategy.

By focusing on quality, professional development and purposeful use of resources, we are better placed to support children from lower-income backgrounds and improve outcomes across our settings.

The power of EYPP lies not in what we buy, but in what we do.

For further support and guidance, you could explore:

• The EEF Guide to the Early Years Pupil Premium 
• The Guide to Effective Professional Development in the Early Years