We've got some questions now around progress of specific groups of pupils. If I can start and ask you how concerning is it that the gap between pupils eligible for free school meals and other pupils has not narrowed in the last 10 years, especially given the £475 million pupil deprivation grant investment.
Yes. I think secondary schools and the issue of poverty were the two things I've noted in the annual report. So, I think it is a concern to us. I think it is worth also remembering that compared to other countries, for example, in PISA, we do compare quite well in terms of equity. There's also an argument that maybe poverty and austerity have increased, so that we're in a way running to keep still. And I think also, as I was suggesting about the reading, poverty really is a social phenomenon. Schools can't solve that on their own. So, there are a lot of caveats to be made around the fact that that poverty gap hasn't closed, but that's not to say that schools can't do something about it, and I've suggested in the annual report a sort of a two-pronged approach. One is the new curriculum. I think there is evidence in the international research that teaching and learning, better teaching and learning, helps disadvantaged poor pupils disproportionately. So, they gain more from it that their peers. So, I think improving teaching and learning, and we discussed that earlier this morning about how the new curriculum is really all about improving the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom. So, that's one approach, and then the other approach, which I've also mentioned earlier, is having a community-focused approach to schools. The schools that do more successfully tackle the poverty gap are the schools that take that kind of approach. It means helping the pupils. It means helping their families. It's about making pupil well-being really high on the agenda. It's very difficult for children to do well in school if they've got all kinds of things happening in their background. So, it's important that schools can maybe signpost those families to other services that can support them and help them. So, it's quite a complex—. It's challenging for schools to go down this route, and I think the more help we can give schools to take that approach, the better. But the schools that do do it do benefit a lot from it. They have better engagement from parents, from the families, and that then reflects back on the work of the children.
And we've just published a collection of good practice about how schools support vulnerable learners, and we'll be teasing out the aspects around community-focused schools a lot more in a report that we'll publish in the next couple of months. So, we've kind of drilled down and looked at what some schools are doing in that area in a bit more detail.
Thank you. Suzy, on this.