From April 2024 , eligible working parents in England with children aged 2 will have access to 15 hours of FREE childcare. We have Nursery places available for 2, 3 and 4 year olds

 

Graceland's Nursery school - Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) Summary report 2021 - 2022


Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) provides extra funding for 3 and 4 year old children: whose parents are in receipt of certain benefits or who have been in care or adopted from care. It provides an extra £310.05 a year for any child receiving 15 hours of the Early Education Entitlement.


For the academic year 2021 - 22 we had:
Autumn - 11 EYPP children
Spring -21 EYPP children
Summer - 27 EYPP children


At Gracelands Nursery School we have intent for our children to be eager and excited to learn. Our staff know and understand children's needs, interests and strengths, drawing on our pedagogical approach. We provide opportunities for awe and wonder through meaningful and enriching learning experiences. The impact of our high-quality teaching is that children's knowledge is built up over time and prior learning consolidated through development of skills. The enhancement of our children is
Cultural Capital through different events and activities. The purpose of our Early Years Pupil Premium Strategy is to ensure that each child reaches their own full potential, irrespective of their background or the challenges they face, becoming confident learners and ready for the next step in their educational adventure.


We have worked to support those families with EYPP children by providing them with teacher interventions, targeted support, small group work, extra nursery hours, nursery lunch and resources to
take home, We continue to offer support to the families and children of Graceland's nursery school with the help of the EYPP funding. This academic year we had funding for £18,292.95 which had a huge impact on the EYPP children as detailed in the Early years pupil premium provision plan.


Throughout the year we have tracked and monitored the experiences and progress of these children.
Data shows that children make some progress in comparison to their starting points.

The children at Gracelands Nursery School were mainly returning children who had already had access to Gracelands Nursery school 50% of EYPP children start working below their age expected development. Carefully planned activities have been designed to support each individual
child to narrow any gaps and to support them to make the best possible progress. Class teachers are aware of all EYPP children and know how to scaffold and extend learning to build on children knowledge and support the children to make progress across all areas of learning. This
resulted on average over 60% of EYPP children achieving age-appropriate development at the midpoint assessments. This shows us that children have made some progress between the starting points and the Spring term. This progress was not as much as anticipated due to the first half of the Spring term being highly disrupted due to high numbers of Covid-19 cases which affected children, families and staff. The school had a two-week partial closure and was open to key worker and vulnerable families during this time. This affected the four new EYPP children settling in the breadth of the curriculum we were able to offer for the other children. The endpoint data shows that 77% of EYPP children achieved age-appropriate development. This shows us that children made good progress from their starting points.


Children with EYPP have had access to targeted creative sessions with our resident artist and you can see from the data that this has particular focused on children’s communication and language and physical development skills.

Communication and language was prioritised for our children after baseline we noted how low this area was and have put in high quality support to ensure that the EYPP children make progress.


We ensure that our learning environments are secure and nurturing yet stimulating both indoors and outdoors with many open-ended and language rich opportunities for children to engage in experiences that will enable them to develop curiosity and initiate their own ideas. Resources are easily accessible so that children can be independent, boosting children’s self-esteem, developing confidence and encouraging perseverance and resilience. Children develop and build relationships
and language through the support and modelling of staff.


We also used the Wellcomm program to support children to develop
their language skills. Children with speech and language difficulties were
identified and all EYPP children had assessment completed and planned
targets and interventions. The children who were age appropriate in their
language development were supported through teacher sessions around
the core books and rhymes. This is designed to support with the learning
of new vocabulary, understanding, listening and attention.
The early words together program was also started to support children to develop their language skills. We worked with the parents to build their confidence to support their communication language and literacy skills at home. We offered online videos, teacher modelling and resources to our EYPP children. We have noted that the children who have participated have increased understanding and spoken language skills. Parents have felt more confident to support children and share books with them at home.

To support our EYPP families and meet their welfare needs we have been providing fruit and snacks daily for the children at nursery. Once a week since January 2022 children have been invited to have a lunch at nursery to support with self-help and independence skills. As you can see from the data having lunch has made a huge difference to the children’s personal emotional and social skills as physical development!


We have encouraged the children to attend as much as possible and kept in touch with these families through regular phone calls, tapestry observations, parent meetings, supporting families and referring them to other services when required. The attendance for EYPP children was 74.74% This made a huge difference to the progress of the children with increased attendance we saw a rise in the children who made accelerated progress.

Providing the children with this support through the EYPP funding has helped to provide the best start in life and with their education really working to narrow the attainment gap

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