Can I thank David Melding for his contribution and his continued campaigning in this area? David, you and I are two of only nine of the original class of ’99, and you have consistently, throughout the period of the last 17 years, championed the rights of looked-after children, and I commend you. Much of the change that we have seen has been as a result of people like you continuing to press these issues—and my Cabinet colleague Ken Skates, with his interest in the rights of looked-after children. It is the attention that has been paid to the issue within this Chamber that has allowed us the space to be able to push things forward. I commend you once again for your strong work in this area.

Now, Estyn’s recent report on good practice in education services to support looked-after children is very welcome to me. I will formally publish a response shortly. As I said to Darren Millar, every single child in Wales, including those who are looked after, has the right to expect an excellent education. We need to learn from the best, like Brynteg. That’s why a self-improving system is so important, not just for looked-after children, but for improvement generally across the board, by allowing individual teachers, school leaders and schools to be able to see for themselves, first hand, excellence, and to be able to use that to inspire their own teaching and reflect on their own practice and their own institutions. It is by that strong focus on a self-improving system—professional standards and continuous professional development—that we will be able to drive things up.

Presiding Officer, it was remiss of me, and I don’t want to be accused of trying to dodge the subject—Darren Millar did ask questions about class sizes, and I’m sure he thinks that I deliberately did not answer them. Can I just say that there is not a single approach, Darren, to addressing this issue? I’ve asked officials to scope out what we can do, starting with our largest classes first; there are classes with over 30 children. What do we need to get those class numbers down? I also recognise that, in some schools, there may be physical constraints or there may be sustainability constraints, so, therefore, we will need to address the problem from a different direction. What I am determined to do is to address the problem, and I will look at a multiple range of interventions that will allow us to do what we all want—that is, give teachers the time that they need to give the attention to those children. We will have to do it in a variety of ways and be creative in how we do it.