Dear Parent,

The Early Years Pupil Premium

From April 2015, nurseries, schools, child-minders and other childcare providers will be able to claim extra funding through the Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) to support children’s development, learning and care. We wanted to write to you to explain what the Early Years Pupil Premium is, explain who is eligible for this funding and, importantly, to ask you to fill out the enclosed forms so that we as a provider can claim the extra funding.

National data and research tells that children eligible for free school meals tend to do less well, for example in 2014, 45 per cent of children eligible for free school meals achieved the expected level at the end of the early years foundation stage compared with 64 per cent of other children. The Early Years Pupil Premium will provide us with extra funding to close this gap.

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 could include for example additional training for our staff on early language, investing in partnership working with our colleagues in the area to further our expertise or supporting our staff in working on specialised areas such as speech and language.

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 for 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.

Therefore we ask that you please complete the form if you believe your child may be eligible for the EYPP. This will allow us to claim the additional Early Years Pupil Premium.

If you have any questions, please contact Cathy.

Thank you