Could I thank the Chair of the Children, Young People and Education committee for her warm welcome of Sir Ian’s work? We will be unique in the entirety of the UK in offering a system that is both portable and equal to all modes of study. We’ve already talked about the importance of part-time students, but it’s also right that we should be in a position to assist postgraduate study. It’s very important for our economy and to recognise that for many students now, the ability to move on to postgraduate study is almost becoming a prerequisite in many of their fields of work. It’s a source of regret to me that, at the moment, we’re not in a position to operate a support system for postgraduate study. It’s a missing link—it is absolutely a missing link—in the system that we currently have at the moment, and I receive a lot of correspondence from Assembly Members across the Chamber about that issue. This proposal will help us address that.

We know that for looked-after children we have a mountain of work to do, and that starts at primary and secondary school. We can have the most progressive higher education student support policy for looked-after children, but, as we’re often reminded by David Melding, if those children don’t get the GCSEs and the A-levels they need, it is worth nothing. So, our support at the HE level will be seen as a continuum of the work that we’re already doing with the pupil deprivation grant and with specific intervention programmes for looked-after children in our schools, so that we can increase the numbers that would indeed benefit from the proposals in Sir Ian Diamond’s work, which I intend to honour and implement.