In the early 2000s, every school in England was encouraged to have a coordinator in charge of the government’s national gifted and talented programme. While the programme itself was imperfect, it did mean one teacher had explicit responsibility for stretching the most academically able children. The programme was scrapped in 2010 and has not been replaced. Almost two decades later, provision in our schools for the most academically able is patchy at best. There are sometimes excellent structured programmes in place, where a headteacher or trust has chosen to prioritise them. But pressures are pulling many of them in the opposite direction. The metrics that determine a school’s reputation are the proportion of pupils who reach expected standards at key stage 2 or who achieve a grade 5 or above at GCSE. This is where schools direct their additional staffing and their targeted interventions. It is not that the most able children have been forgotten; it is more that they are just not currently anyone’s responsibility. There is a group for whom this matters most. The Sutton Trust describes them as “missing talent” – high-attaining pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds who are at the top of their class at primary school and then fall away. Widening gap Disadvantaged children are three times less likely to be in the top 10 per cent at the end of primary school. By sixth form and beyond, the gap with their more advantaged peers is stark. Some 37 per cent of the most advantaged high-ability learners go on to a Russell Group university, compared with 17 per cent of the least advantaged. Some of the most able children are also not visible in results data. A pupil who is disengaged, or who has never been told they are clever, is less likely to show up as a high-attainer. Schools that rely only on results to identify their most able will miss a significant number of them. This is why The Duston School in Northamptonshire two years ago introduced a formal, structured programme for its most able pupils. It was built around a broader view of potential to include quality of thinking, curiosity and how pupils respond when intellectually challenged. The cohort we identified has grown significantly, but more important is what has happened to the culture around them. Pupils who might not previously have seen themselves as high-achievers have begun to aspire to that group. Sixth-form numbers have risen sharply and top grades at GCSE and A-level have followed. Academic ambition Many schools have similar experiences. They run programmes to stretch these pupils, enter them for national competitions and build cultures of academic ambition from year 7 onwards. The National Association for Able Children in Education works with schools to share what works, develop provision and recognise those that get it right. The problem is that at the moment none of this is joined up and it is not required of schools. Countries that take the performance of their most able seriously, such as the Netherlands, do so through deliberate national policy, not just goodwill. We are not calling for a new national programme, but it is time for a serious effort to identify and share the good practice that already exists and to make high-quality provision for the most able a clear national expectation.