Thank you, Lynne, for that. I do want to reflect on, and let the Chamber know, because the Chamber may not be aware, what Andreas Schleicher—I can’t even say his name properly—who is in charge of the education department of the OECD, the director of education, said about our results today. He says:

‘It is true that there is a big performance gap but there are signs of improvement, if you look at the latest mathematics results—they’re going in the right direction’.

He also goes on to say

‘there’s no reason why Wales is so far behind but I see many things in place now that are putting it on a more promising track.’

He said that we were building a new curriculum, and that we were moving from reform fatigue to people taking ownership of change, which was an important ingredient for success in the longer term. And we have to keep testing ourselves against that advice. So, I am confident that we are making the right decisions.

With regard to leadership, however, in the report of 2014 by the OECD, leadership was identified as a crucial component, and if we’re being honest—and we need to be honest today—not a lot changed between 2014 and now with regard to leadership. Perhaps that’s because there were other aspects of the reform agenda that were being taken forward and were regarded as more time-sensitive and important. But I announced, last month, my intention to establish the new academy for leadership. It will focus initially on headteachers and aspiring headteachers. We need to be much more proactive in how we manage the career and support the development of people who aspire to be school leaders. We need to ensure that they have the opportunities throughout their careers to develop the essential skills that will make school leadership a success for them. We have revamped our headteacher qualification to make sure that it is fit for purpose and ensure that those people who are taking it will go on to develop a career in headship.

The leadership academy can’t stop there. Once we have embedded issues around school leadership at head level and senior management team level, we need to look to see what we can do to support governors—an essential part of the accountability regime. Too many of our governors, if you read Estyn reports, don’t have the skills that they need to hold headteachers to account, and we need to look at leadership throughout the education system, in local education authorities, in consortia, indeed, I would say, at Welsh Government level too, so that we have the very best people leading our education system at every level.