Okay. Thank you. And welcome again. If it's okay, we'll move straight into questions—we have quite a number of questions to get through this morning. Firstly, Llyr.
Thank you, Chair, and good morning. I just want to start by asking about your perception of how schools are using the pupil development grant funding, and to what extent they are genuinely targeting that funding exclusively towards children eligible for free school meals.
Thank you for the question. This grant has been targeted far better by now than it was originally. Estyn has made several reports regarding the effectiveness of the grant, and, really, going back to before this specific grant, to a similar grant, called RAISE. At the start of this grant, the funding was often spent on tackling underachievement, rather than dealing with the underachievement of children who are eligible for free school meals specifically. But, over a period of time, we have seen that it is targeted much better by now. That's not to say that the targeting is working perfectly still, and I think that we are seeing examples where the targeting isn't going just to children who receive free school meals. Schools sometimes interpret poverty in a slightly wider way than that. In terms of what schools are doing with the grant, we have given evidence to you of the kinds of things that they are doing. They are tracking progress of pupils, they are trying to improve attendance, they are trying to work with families and the community in general, they're doing work specifically to improve how children are doing in exams, in key stage 4, specifically—a lot of funding is being spent on that—improving the confidence of students, taking students on extra-curricular activities, improving literacy and numeracy. Those are the kinds of activities they're being used for.
Because the research by Ipsos MORI and the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods has shown that there is some kind of blurring—I think that's the term that they use—in terms of who is eligible. But you are relatively comfortable with the fact that there is sufficient targeting happening. You referred to the fact that it is used, perhaps, to reach a slightly wider cohort than just those who are eligible for free school meals, but you do feel that that balance, from your experience, is acceptable.