evidence: The manifesto claims: "This attainment gap was 29 percentage points for 2018-19 (pre-covid), representing an improvement of only 3 percentage points since 2005-06, based on the percentage of school leavers achieving 5+ GCSEs at grade A*-C or above including English and Maths." [...] The Department of Education’s annual School Leavers Survey records GCSE results for both students who are eligible for free school meals (FSME) and students without that entitlement (non-FSME). [...] However, those figures cover the first year of the pandemic – when teacher-assessed grading was introduced – and are less of a direct comparison than the stats cited in the UUP manifesto.