Could I thank Rhianon for her welcome of the initiative? I think if you look at the statistics about where we have particularly large class sizes in the infants sector in Wales, in constituencies such as yours, but also here in the capital, we have some of the highest proportion of young children being taught in classes over the size of 30.

The international evidence, and one of the studies that took place in Ontario, and the university in Ontario, recognised that this policy, alongside other policies, was particularly beneficial to more deprived children. We have to recognise that children coming into our education system do not all have the same advantages. Therefore, I believe there is a legitimate role for Government in its education system to try and address the differences, and to address that disadvantage. I think that is a legitimate role of the state, and, as a liberal who doesn’t like too much intervention of the state in things, for me, this is one legitimate role of intervention of the state to try and redress that balance for those children. Because sometimes, through no fault of their own, those children have got nobody else to fight for them, and that’s our job here.

Now, there is a balance to be struck between making funds available but also making sure that they’re used for the correct resources. We will try and get the money out to the front end as quickly as possible via, as I said, working with our local authority partners and our regional consortia. If they find that the current process that we have in place for the first round is too bureaucratic, then I’m always willing to look to refine that as we take the grant forward. So, if there are concerns about the level of bureaucracy associated with the grant, then I’m always very happy to look at that, but there’s a balance to be struck between satisfying yourself that it’s being used for the proper purposes and making sure we have the evidence to carry the policy forward. Because we’ll be looking for outcomes and differences that this investment is making, because we constantly have to test ourselves that the decisions we’re making are leading to outcomes that we would want. So, we need to evaluate our own performance in making these policy decisions.

To answer Llyr Griffiths’s question about capital, there is a split between revenue and capital, because I recognise very much what Llyr said, that sometimes there is an issue around sheer space that causes problems. What I’m particularly interested in doing is looking at that in the context of the childcare offer as well. We know the childcare offer will be rolled out in the years to come, and there is a great opportunity to have synergy here between our foundation phase offer as well as our childcare offer. If we can do that on the same site, that’s also got to be beneficial for parents as well if they can access all the interventions and support for their children in one particular area.