Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. May I move the amendments officially? PISA, of course, unfortunately, has reminded us once again that Wales has performed worst of the UK countries, that the scores in terms of reading, maths and science are worse in Wales than they were 10 years ago, and that Wales is further behind the UK average in those three areas as compared with 2006.

And, as we say in one of our amendments, that shows the record of Labour—there has been an unbroken line since devolution of Labour education Minister after Labour education Minister, and, 10 years after that first failure, we are still waiting for the necessary reforms to be put in place. I have to say that some of the demands made recently to repatriate powers to Westminster and overturn devolution for education actually miss the point entirely. Because, if a football team is at the bottom of the league, then you don’t move stadium or ask to play in another league. What you do, of course, is sack the manager and change your players, and managers usually—[Interruption.] No, I’m not going to take your intervention; I have a lot to get in in five minutes. But managers in that situation usually take responsibility for the situation, something that the First Minister, of course, has refused to do. Yes, he has said that the results are disappointing. Yes, he’s said that he’s confident that they will be better next time. But, of course, that’s exactly what he said the last time, and I have reminded the Cabinet Secretary that, the last time we had these disappointing results, she asked the First Minister, in 2012, if he was ashamed of the results. Well, shouldn’t he be even more ashamed this time, because of the failure once again?

Yes, there are more fundamental reforms in the pipeline. It’s regrettable that it’s taken 10 years to get to this point. We know that it will take four or five years before those reforms are completed, never mind, of course, seeing the impact that one would hope to see in terms of the PISA results. One does feel, in such a situation, that this is a last throw of the dice. So, it is crucial that we do ensure that the right changes are put in place. It’s not necessarily a quick change, I accept that, but we have to be confident that we are on the right track. And it has to be a change that is owned by the sector if it’s to succeed. And that is something I’ve already raised a number of times with the Cabinet Secretary in the context of these reforms, so I won’t rehearse those issues here.

But, as we’ve heard, one can take some hope from other nations and look at the record of a country like the Republic of Ireland, which has performed very positively this time. Estonia is another nation that I’ve read about this week that has turned around their performance. We don’t have to emulate Singapore and China and move to a culture of working unacceptably long hours. Finland has some of the shortest study hours, both in school and out of school, and yet they are performing well. It’s not necessarily funding that’s the solution, either. There are countries that spend more on education and don’t perform as well, and there are countries that spend less and perform better. One lesson that I take from the Estonian context—and it’s interesting to note that teachers there usually have a Master’s degree, and of course Plaid Cymru has consistently said that, if we want the best education system, then we have to get the best educators, and, in our manifesto and since then, of course, we have been explaining how we want to do more to attract the best candidates into teaching and ensure that continuing professional development for educators in order to create that culture of continuous improvement. We talk, of course, about the status of the profession, improving training, giving more freedom and responsibility to teachers in deciding what they teach. We talked about creating a teachers’ premium, too, for all teachers who have a Master’s degree in educational practice or a comparable level of skills. That teachers’ premium would assist in attracting and retaining the most talented in the teaching profession, and also retain good teachers in the classroom, because we are losing too many of those in the current climate.