Early Years Pupil Premium: How to Claim It and Spend It Well

Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) is additional funding to support disadvantaged children taking up a government-funded early education place. It is no longer limited to three- and four-year-olds: EYPP now reaches eligible children from nine months old right through to four years. Thousands of eligible children go unclaimed for every year — usually because nobody asked the right question on the registration form.

Who is eligible

Any child aged from nine months to four years who is taking up a funded early education entitlement place can attract EYPP, provided they meet one of the eligibility routes below. (Younger children qualify through the entitlements for working parents and the disadvantaged two-year-old offer; older children through the universal 15 hours.)

A child qualifies if they are taking up a funded entitlement place and either:

• Their family receives a qualifying benefit (Income Support, income-based JSA, income-related ESA, Universal Credit below the earnings threshold, Guarantee element of Pension Credit, Child Tax Credit below the income threshold, or support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act), or
• The child has been looked after by a local authority for at least one day, has been adopted from care, or is subject to a special guardianship or child arrangements order

The second group is the one settings miss most often. Adopted and previously-looked-after children qualify permanently, regardless of family income.

Because the age range now starts at nine months, baby-room and toddler-room children need the same eligibility check as your pre-school cohort — that is where most missed funding now sits.

Getting the claim right

1. Add eligibility questions to your registration form — every child, no exceptions, phrased neutrally
2. Collect the parent's National Insurance number and date of birth (needed for the eligibility check)
3. Submit through your local authority's provider portal in each headcount window
4. Re-check at every headcount: family circumstances change mid-year
5. Keep evidence of the check for audit

The single highest-return change most settings can make is a one-line addition to the registration form: "Some families are entitled to extra funding for their child. Please provide your National Insurance number so we can check — this does not affect your fees."

Spending it in a way that shows impact

EYPP is not ring-fenced to individual children, but you must be able to explain how it improved outcomes for disadvantaged children. The spends that consistently evidence well:

• **Targeted adult time.** Funding a practitioner's non-contact hours to run a daily language group has a clearer causal line to progress than a general resource purchase.
• **Speech and language intervention.** Whether an external SaLT session or in-house training in a structured programme, this is the highest-impact area for most disadvantaged cohorts.
• **Staff CPD in a specific pedagogy.** Sustained shared thinking, communication-friendly environments, or trauma-informed practice.
• **Family engagement.** Book-lending libraries, home learning packs, or a paid family support hour each week.

The spends that evidence poorly: general consumables, new furniture, and anything that would have been bought anyway.

Proving impact without drowning in paperwork

You need three things, and only three:

1. A baseline for each eligible child at the point funding starts
2. A note of the intervention and how much of it happened
3. A follow-up assessment at the end of the term or year

One side of A4 per child per year is enough. What inspectors want to see is that you know who your disadvantaged children are, what you did differently for them, and whether it worked.

The conversation with parents

Some families are reluctant to share benefit information. Frame it as the setting's job, not a means test:

We're checking whether your child qualifies for extra government funding that comes to us, not to you. It doesn't change your fees or your hours. It just means we can put more support in.

Never present it as charity, and never let a child's EYFS record label them in a way another parent could see.

Stack it with other entitlements

EYPP sits alongside, not instead of:

• The Disability Access Fund (DAF) for children on DLA — a one-off annual payment
• SEN Inclusion Funding from your local authority
• The expanded entitlements for working parents

Check each one separately for every child. Most settings claim one and forget the others.

Early Years Circle members get the EYPP Claim & Impact Pack — registration form wording, an eligibility checker, an impact tracker and parent conversation scripts — plus our funding calculators for 30 hours, EYPP and DAF.