I’ll declare an interest as somebody who has 25 years’ experience, in the classroom and outside of the classroom, in teaching. If we go right the way back to 1997, I think it was a really positive thing for the Labour Government to legislate to bring class sizes down to 30. But really, since 1999, I think what we have in Wales is a legacy of failure. Each education Minister clearly—clearly—has failed the children in Wales. I’m pretty unhappy with lots of discussion about targets so on and so forth, because quite often targets just give politicians ammunition to have debates like this, and you quote percentages and so on and so forth. I think what we need to do is take politics out of the classroom. What we need to do is ask ourselves: what do we want from our education system? What do we want? What is excellence? Let’s define what we mean by that. What are higher standards? What do we actually mean?

For me, the rot really set in in education when the Conservatives introduced the market into the system. I’ll give you an example: awarding bodies competing—