Building on this, and working with Plaid Cymru as part of the co-operation agreement, from September of this year we start to roll out the universal primary free-school-meal offer. The biggest influences, Dirprwy Lywydd, on the success of learners are the quality of the learning and teaching they experience, and particularly, as John Griffiths was saying, for our younger learners, the environment that they experience both at home and at a community level as well. And I've previously set out some of the actions we are taking to support community-focused schools, for example, but it's also essential that we continuously improve the quality of learning and teaching that learners from low-income households experience, as we know how profound an impact this is on their progress. So, I want to look at how we can incentivise teachers to teach in the schools that serve our most disadvantaged learners, and I'm commissioning some initial research in this, with a view, then, to launching a pilot to explore some approaches. Over the next five years, we will be providing over £500,000 to enable our school improvement services to offer a specific professional learning programme, focused on how to raise the attainment and support the well-being of learners from low-income backgrounds, and that will be launched in January of next year.

We are also establishing a strategic partnership with the Education Endowment Foundation, and they will be adapting their teaching and learning toolkit, which provides teachers with accessible evidence of effective learning and teaching strategies, in our distinct context in Wales, and it will obviously be available both in Welsh and in English. As part of the rich professional learning opportunities we are offering our teachers, our universities are working with us to develop a module for our national Master's programme, focused specifically on tackling the impact of poverty on attainment, and that will also be available from 2023.

The reading and oracy action plan, which I announced last autumn, sets out our priorities to improve speech, communication and language. I've announced an additional £5 million for reading programmes across Wales, which will provide a book for every learner alongside a targeted scheme of reading support, focusing on early years and on disadvantaged learners, and we're expanding a project that will support over 2,000 children to improve their language, communication and reading skills—a project led by Bangor University—and it provides seven to 11-year-olds with an intensive, interactive 10-week language and literacy programme in Welsh and in English, either in or out of the classroom.

In relation to learning and teaching, evidence indicates that many of the countries that have the most equitable education systems are those that adopt mixed attainment learner grouping for as long as possible, so that can raise overall learner attainment and it can avoid the detrimental impact of setting, which often can result in learners from lower income households being placed in the lowest groupings, and that suppresses their aspirations, all too often. We know that setting and other forms of attainment-based learner grouping are used widely in our system in Wales, but we lack the robust research evidence on it, and the effect that it has. So, I am commissioning an initial review of evidence, with a focus on the extent to which mixed-attainment teaching and learning is already taking place, what the advantages are of that, and what the downsides are as well.

All of these considerations are at the forefront of the curriculum reforms that we are undertaking. As John Griffiths said, it is designed to achieve high standards and aspirations for all, and that absolutely includes those impacted by poverty. Schools are free to design their own curricula, with the needs of their learners and their communities in mind. I published additional materials in June to support schools to design their curriculum, and to embed that knowledge and those experiences key to the process of curriculum design.

In response to the disruption caused by the pandemic for learners moving from pre to post-16 education, we've introduced a post-16 transitions plan, supported by £45 million-worth of additional funding from 2020 to 2023. But there is much more that the post-16 sector can do to tackle the impact of poverty on attainment, and in my oral statement earlier this year, I made clear our intention to expand the work of the Seren network, for example, so it reaches more socioeconomically disadvantaged learners. And in the Bill that we've just passed through the Senedd, there will be a legislative duty on the new commission to seek to expand equality of opportunity and improve access for learners from under-represented groups, and to encourage learners from lower income backgrounds into post-16 education.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I thank John Griffiths, once again, for bringing this debate. His story, as we have heard, is the embodiment of my ambition for Wales to be a nation of second chances, where it is never too late to learn, and I know as well that we both share the conviction that whereas untackled poverty can be a bar to education, we also know that education at its best can also be a bar to poverty. Dirprwy Llywydd, working with our partners, I give you the promise that we will build an education system that can play its full part on the journey to the fairer Wales that we all want to see, where we achieve high standards and aspirations for all.