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Last week, the Welsh education minister Jeremy Miles announced a £2 million programme to trial new approaches to the timing of the school day. In the two-year pilot, participating schools will provide learners with the opportunity to take part in music, art, sports, and other activities after core school hours, to build rich social and cultural knowledge. As well as supporting individual children’s health and wellbeing, the policy could also be a powerful way of addressing child poverty in the round.

Today, the departing Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, posed an important question in her final speech. She asked how the government can claim to be focused on educational catch-up on the one hand, while at the same time refusing to give families income security and risking more children being pushed into poverty. This is a crucial point. Poverty at home is the strongest statistical predictor of how well a child will do in school.