We’ve had many settings use their EYPP funding on Tales Toolkit over the years, and we think it’s a brilliant use of budget! Read on to discover more about how we meet EEF and Ofsted criteria and hear from practitioners.
Support for disadvantaged children is going up by over 45% to £570 per child per year
Why not use that extra financial support to start your Tales Toolkit journey? You'll have to convince the right people and showing impact clearly is a top priority. Use the resources on this page to help you pitch Tales Toolkit to your SLT. With all these pointers, you can’t go wrong!
At Tales Toolkit we are committed to ensuring that all children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, receive the best possible start to their education. When you use EYPP funding to buy Tales Toolkit, you'll get an early years intervention that...
Investing in Tales Toolkit isn’t just about improving early years outcomes—it’s about setting children up for future success.
In a recent survey, we asked teachers if Tales Toolkit helped to support children eligible for EYPP to catch up with their peers.
87% of those surveyed gave us 4 or 5 stars out of 5!
In Tales Toolkit sessions everyone is equal and all children contribute and feel safe to. EYPP children find this really empowering.
The success that we have had has encouraged another school within the Trust to adopt the Tales Toolkit programme to support their higher numbers of EYPP children. We have noticed a significant rise in the love of story telling and reading for these children after using Tales Toolkit.
Yes, the visuals and structure allow it to be accessible to all. Some EYPP children have really grown in confidence and are much more likely to contribute to discussions.
It has definitely supported pupils to begin to catch up with their peers.
Tales Toolkit supports all children. We have also used it as an intervention with key children that need to build confidence with language and those that need to develop communication skills.
EYPP children were exposed to an increased vocabulary and understanding of story structure.
Tales Toolkit has already been recognised by the EEF as a programme with high potential for impact, which is why we were invited to be part of a pilot trial with them over 2023-24. The results of this trial will be released in 2025.
The EEF advocates a ‘balanced approach’ to spending EYPP, with three main strands. Expand these sections to understand how Tales Toolkit applies across the board!
EEF breaks this down even further into two ways to make sure your EYPP makes the biggest impact:
A) Reflect on current practice. Identify areas where improved interactions* can have the greatest impact on disadvantaged children.
B) Invest in evidence-informed professional development for the whole team. Focus on approaches which are most relevant to disadvantaged children.*
*This is where Tales Toolkit comes in!
The EEF suggests three ways to spend your EYPP money within a ‘Developing Quality Practice' remit, all of which apply to Tales Toolkit:
There is also a table of ‘evidence-informed’ approaches to consider when purchasing support for the most disadvantaged children. We've created a table showing how these approaches can be directly matched against Tales Toolkit. See below or download the pdf.
The EEF outlines a few key ways support can be personalised for the most disadvantaged children:
Applying these, they list two suggestions for spending the EYPP money:
1. A robust assessment tool to:
2. Offer targeted, personalised support for:
It can be used in smaller, more select groups, or in one-to-one sessions. It creates a scaffolding and upskills practitioners to be responsive and flexible so those children that might ordinarily find play difficult to access are supported and included in group play sessions. It has had success with children with enhanced SEMH needs and SEND. It can be tailored to adapt to the needs and interests of the child, making it highly personal and targeted.
Tales Toolkit is currently developing training for parents ready for early 2026. This will greatly help parental engagement and understanding. Tales Toolkit already promotes the use of ‘Loan Libraries’ to help continue the storytelling at home, with resources, ideas and inspiration available to kickstart the creativity away from the setting. There really is no limit to how personal Tales Toolkit can become, depending on the relationship between the facilitator (teacher, childminder, parent etc) and the children. Plus, when the practice is embedded, the learning continues when the adult leaves, with children able to engage in independent play and storytelling alone or in a group.
The EEF is keen that changes made within the remit of EYPP funding are lasting and sustainable. They recommend settings:
They break the ‘EYPP strategy’ down into:
The training is all online, whole staff teams train at-source and new staff can be upskilled quickly, the resources are eco-friendly and built to last, and the ongoing subscription costs are low.
Tales Toolkit ensures continuing CPD and best practice with a constantly evolving bank of expert webinars (e.g. Mine Conkbayir: “Neuroscience in Early Years” or Greg Bottrill “The Art Of Story Dreaming And The Joy Of Being Me” among many others), a rolling blog, online forums for members to share best practice and termly check-ins with the team.
It is a whole-setting intervention that aims to affect every aspect of early years learning and build those foundations of healthy, happy, curious learners. Tales Toolkit has been rolled out to multiple settings across several local authorities in the UK. Best results are seen when local authorities work closely with settings to ensure high levels of engagement and the sharing of best-practice.
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Here are some documents to help you pitch to your decision-makers. We've covered everything they want to hear, from headteacher to governors to Ofsted.
Tailor these templates to suit your setting and remember to:
A detailed breakdown of why Tales Toolkit is a great fit, with evidence of impact cross-referenced with Ofsted expectations, the EEF Toolkit recommendations and the EYFS framework.
A template letter to Ofsted for you to make your own! A letter that helps you explain to Ofsted why Tales Toolkit is a great choice for your EYPP funding.
Based on EEF's Pupil Premium guide, this table shows the key areas of attainment to focus on and how they can be directly applied to Tales Toolkit.
Here's a bit more background information about Pupil Premium and the EEF.
