Which children are eligible for the funding?
The Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) funding is for children from 9 months old, provided they meet one of these 2 criteria:
- The family receives benefits such as Universal Credit or Income Support
- The child is in local authority care or has been at some point.
In April 2025, the Department for Education increased the funding by 45%, raising it to £570 per child per year.
Once children go to Reception, they become eligible for Pupil Premium funding.
Why is the funding so important?
On average, even very young children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds start to fall behind. By the time they start in Reception, the learning gap between them and their peers is already 4.6 months. The gap widens as they go through primary and secondary school. The aim of the EYPP is to narrow this gap and help improve outcomes for these children.
The early years are crucial in shaping a child's future learning, development, health, and employment prospects. The EYPP offers settings further opportunities to offer high-quality education and care so that all children have more of a chance to get off to a strong start in life.
As the Education Endowment Fund states, ‘Early intervention - before these gaps grow – is crucial to ensuring every child gets a fair start.’ (EEF)
How can you use the finding to maximise its impact?
Focussing on quality and progress is essential when are considering how to use the EYPP.
- Developing Quality Practice: through high quality professional development, educators can improve their teaching skills and create richer learning environments. This is particularly beneficial for disadvantaged children, while impacting every child in the setting.
Maths Champions is a professional development programme that focuses on developing the mathematical knowledge of educators so that they can help young children with early mathematics. Disadvantaged children involved in this programme make, on average, six months more progress. As well as this, all children that participate in the programme make, on average, three months more progress in maths and language compared to those in settings that do not.
- Targeted support: providing support tailored to meet individual needs helps children make progress in their learning. Some children benefit from 1:1 or small group work that focuses on a specific area of learning, such as communication and language, early literacy or mathematics. For example, you could use your EYPP funding to buy a licence for a robust language screening tool, and the training your team needs to use it effectively. By identifying children with greater needs in their language development, you can accurately target them for more small-group or 1:1 opportunities for conversation. This extra support will help them to make additional progress in their communication skills. You can use the assessment tool to monitor the children’s progress, so you can check that your approaches are working.
The EEF’s Guide to the Early Years Pupil Premium details how to make use of the funding to have greatest impact.
Why is evidence-informed practice needed?
Early intervention, supported by evidence-based approaches and careful tracking of EYPP spending, supports educators to give children a fair start in life.
The Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) Early years evidence store offers a wealth of resources, including videos, that highlight evidence-informed practices and show them in action.
Effective leadership is crucial for the planning and implementation of these strategies. This is explained in the Lead, plan and sustain section of the EEF guidance.
Monitoring and evaluating impact of how you use the EYPP
It goes without saying that some interventions are more effective than others. To ensure that we spend the funding effectively, we need to regularly monitor and assess the impact of them on children’s progress.
Engaging parents through one-to-one conversations and providing a range of strategies to choose from can enhance the effectiveness of interventions. Leicestershire County Council has produced thorough details of how they approach the EYPP, emphasising quality and progress throughout. Involving parents is one of the key criteria that they emphasise.