Early Years Pupil Premium
How We Spend Our Pupil Premium
What is the Early Years Pupil Premium?
Early Years Pupil Premium is a funding stream that gives the school approximately £302.00 for a 3-4yr old child who qualifies for free school meals. We use this funding stream to support the cost of providing Forest School experience for all children who attend Kate Greenaway Nursery School before they leave us and transition to primary school. The funding doesn’t cover the entire cost of Forest School but it helps us to be able to continue to provide it with quality teaching and consistency.
What Are The Benefits?
Research by the New Economics Foundation (A Marvellous Opportunity to Learn 2006) identified some of the following benefits for children in accessing a Forest School Programme:
Increased confidence to learn
As a result of the freedom, encouragement, time and space offered during Forest School, children learn at their own pace and level. Exploring repeated activities and making decisions about how they might complete their task enables deep learning and develops a positive attitude to the learning process. These attitudes and skills are the building blocks for future learning.
Social skills
At Forest School children work together, sharing tools and ideas. Children learn about team work and the consequences of their actions on others.
Communication
Language development is a key to future learning in young children. The experience Forest School offers encourages communication for all children. Forest School takes place off site in Camley Street Nature Park and offers children the opportunity to experience the outdoors and to interact with nature. Many children in inner city schools may not have this opportunity. Our experience of taking young children to Forest School has shown us that even the most reluctant communicators have engaged well and been very keen to relay their learning to others through talk, role play or drawings. Increased communication skills builds confidence in children and lessens the chances of unacceptable behaviour, as children can then communicate their needs and feel less frustrated by their lack of language.
Motivation and Concentration
When children are interested in what they are doing, they are motivated to learn and this leads to increased concentration. When a child is concentrating, the neural pathways strengthen in the young brain. The more the pathways are used, the stronger they become.
Physical benefits
Many inner-London children do not have easy access to open, green spaces. Forest School is an excellent opportunity to provide them with this resource. As a result of being and exploring outdoors children develop stamina, strength and fine and gross motor skills, which in turn, help them access many other areas of learning.
Knowledge and Understanding
Encouraging and supporting children to develop an interest in nature and a respect for the environment is an investment that will protect the natural world for future generations. Children in inner cities particularly benefit from the opportunity to experience this connection.
Taking Risks
Our culture has become more and more risk averse. When children are not offered appropriate opportunities to take risks and learn about the consequences of them, they become either fearful of risk and avoid it altogether or fail to recognise it when it needs to be managed. Managing your own exposure to risk is a life skill.
Forest School is a way of offering children risk-taking experiences in a supported learning environment.