Yes, certainly, it has improved a great deal. When I was looking at this initially, the targeting wasn’t happening at all. It was being spent on children who were underachieving, and one of the things that we did notice in the first report was that much more funding was being spent on boys than girls. And, of course, that raised the question immediately that it wasn't being spent then on children who are eligible for free school meals, because those numbers are equal. So, it wasn’t, but it has improved. There is a discussion about who exactly should have it and whether free school meals is the best definition. So, I think that schools are perhaps not following that exactly, but within the spirit of the grant, I think I’m fairly comfortable. There is a specific question—I don’t know if you are going to ask this—regarding more able and talented pupils.
That's where I was going next.
So, if there is a cohort of pupils who are missing out on this, they are the more able and talented pupils who receive free school meals. There are a number of reasons for this, I think. One of them is that there’s still some feeling that less able children should be receiving this grant, children who are underachieving. Schools don’t always identify underachievement of those more able children. It seems that they are doing okay, but if they were given more support, they would do even better.
So, is it a lack of awareness of the nature of the grant, and that the individual has to be targeted rather than just those who are underachieving? Is that the problem? Or is it the regime that focuses on exam results and the need to draw those pupils who are underachieving up, rather than incentivising those who are achieving to achieve better?