Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for her statement? I know that she’s got some long-standing views on this issue, and it’s probably the hook by which she cornered Carwyn to get into his Cabinet—it surely helped to broker their deal. But when it comes to evidence-based policy making, I really cannot understand why the Cabinet Secretary is pursuing this particular issue.

We heard evidence, as an Assembly, from Professor David Reynolds, an eminent education expert and adviser to the Welsh Government, just six months ago, and the evidence suggested that a focus on reducing class sizes to 25 was not the way to improve standards, and in terms of delivering results on investments, there were much more productive ways of spending money in primary education. It’s not just David Reynolds—you’ve got Her Majesty’s chief inspector of schools at Estyn also saying that classroom size, and I quote,

‘doesn’t seem to be a big factor in our inspection outcomes’.

In fact, he says that reducing classes to 25 or under is going to make little difference.

And the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which has been the subject of much debate in this Chamber recently, particularly since the Programme for International Student Assessment results were published, has also said, and I quote, that

‘the size of the class is unrelated to the school system’s overall performance’.

So, you’ve got many voices—a chorus of voices—that are saying, ‘Look, if you want the best bang for your buck, spending cash on reducing class sizes, whilst very attractive and no doubt may make managing classes easier, is not the best way to invest that money.’ In fact, the Sutton Trust, a formative education charity, dedicated to improving social mobility—an aim that we all share in this Chamber—through education, has said that it is one of the least effective ways of improving school performance.

Of course, there have been many on the Government backbenches who have expressed concerns about this policy. None of them are here today—I wonder whether this is why there’s been a bit of an exodus from the Chamber on the Government backbenches during your statement.

So, I just wonder, Minister, what advice you sought and what advice was given by Government officials in the development of this particular policy, or was this something that you were determined to steamroller through, regardless of the advice that you might be given by officials? Can I also ask, because you didn’t make any reference to them in your statement, what advice was sought from the regional education consortia in the development of the policy? I’m sure that they would have many other priority areas that they might wish to spend £36 million in had they been given the option.

I also wonder about the arithmetic and how you’ve worked out that it’s £36 million that’s required in order to deliver the aims of your policy. We know that you’ve split this cash now over a four-year period, and you’ve split it in two between capital expenditure and investment on the revenue side, but, surely, if there’s going to be investment on the revenue side, there are going to be continuous costs beyond the four-year window, which you appear to have been committed to. Can you tell us how you expect those schools—? Do you want to just pull the plug on any additional revenue costs and any additional staffing that they’ve put in place in order to achieve this policy post that four-year period? I mean, how are you expecting them to be able to cope?

And what rationale do you have for the £20 million? It looks to me as though you’ve just put a finger up in the air and said, ‘I think it’s about £20 million that we’re going to need to invest in school buildings.’ I’ve seen no evidence anywhere in Wales that that is the sum of money that would need to be given and invested in our school system in order to achieve this particular policy, and I can’t see either any evidence that it’s £16 million that would be required in order to reduce class sizes across Wales to make sure that they’re all under 25. So, I’d very much appreciate seeing some more evidence around that from you.

In addition, I just wonder if you could tell us about the rationale behind effectively making the call for more teachers, and putting further pressure on teacher recruitment, at a time when we’re beginning to see the unfolding of a bit of a crisis when it comes to teacher recruitment here in Wales. We know that for certain subjects in secondary schools there are problems, but there are also problems on the primary school end as well, particularly in the Welsh-medium sector, where we’ve seen evidence that has just been published very recently showing that the number of students completing teacher training through the medium of Welsh has been falling—in fact, it has almost halved over the past three years. That’s a big concern to me, and I just do not know how you’re going to achieve these additional teachers, who need to be going into the system anyway to refresh those who are leaving—who are departing sometimes because they are discouraged and sometimes because it’s a job that they don’t feel that they want to do anymore, or because they’re retiring. How are you going to recruit these additional staff in order to plug these gaps and realise this particular policy?

I don’t know what assessment you’ve made of local authorities’ ability to be able to construct extra classrooms on particular school sites either. I see no evidence—no evidence whatsoever—that this is the right way forward.

Can you tell me as well, given the Estyn report’s publication today, which identified the quality of teaching and leadership as being the two big issues that it found through its inspection processes as being the problems and challenges in Wales, what proportion of this cash, if any, is going to be invested in leadership and is going to be invested in continuing professional development? I note in your statement that you make reference to some of the other actions that the Government is taking, but you didn’t mention the national leadership academy, you didn’t mention some of the other incentives that you might want to give to bring new people into the teaching profession, but those are things that I believe are more pressing and need to be addressed. So I just wonder what you are doing to address those problems as well, because they, to me, seem to be far more pressing than trying to reduce class sizes to 25 when the evidence just isn’t there to support your claims that this is going to be the big game-changer. I also have to say, Cabinet Secretary—