Can I thank Llyr for his questions and the shared understanding and agreement I think there is between us around the issues that we need to solve with regard to post-compulsory education. You’re absolutely right, the current system does lead to duplication and competition in a way that is often unhelpful. It does not provide, as Hazelkorn said herself in the report, good value for public money, and at a time of austerity we need to make sure that the Welsh pound is working really, really hard and delivering good outcomes. We need to ensure that there is collaboration across the sector, rather than competition, which sometimes does not promote the best interests of the individual student. Sometimes, understandably, it promotes the best interests of the institution rather than the learner, and that’s what we need to address here.

So, with regard to the tertiary education authority, which is known as a TEA—and if somebody could come up with a better name for it during the consultation, I would be grateful, because I think the ‘TEA’ is not a great term, so we need to call it something else, but it is referred to as a TEA in the Hazelkorn report. With regard to the issue around sixth forms, the Member says at the moment sixth forms are part of the school system—actually, they’re not part of the school system at all. Sixth forms are funded directly by Welsh Government in terms of allocations to local authorities. They’re not part of the revenue support grant. Sixth forms are not actually inspected by Estyn—this may be of surprise to some people, but that is not necessarily what Estyn do when they go into a school—to look at sixth-form provision. They are there to look at the compulsory education system, and I think that is a problem.

Hazelkorn herself says in the review that it is undecided about where best sixth forms sit in this debate, and there is merit in moving them as part of the post-compulsory education system into the TEA, but there is also merit, as there is in some countries that I’ve alluded to, where they sit very firmly in the education system. The consultation gives us an opportunity to explore the pros and cons of both sections. I’m open-minded to this. I think there is merit in terms of simplicity and the role of Estyn in keeping them and putting them very much in the schools framework. But at the same time, if we want to ensure that there is no competition and there is overall planning, there is a reason why you would put them into the tertiary education authority. But the consultation is an opportunity to tease through in greater detail some of those issues.

With regard to the ‘coleg’, as you know, the task and finish group is currently looking at the future remit of the ‘coleg’. The ‘coleg’ has done fantastic work in expanding the opportunities in higher education to study through the medium of Welsh, and the fact that they’ve done such a good job of that gives me some confidence that we can, at this stage, look to extend their remit into further education. We know that there is a paucity of provision in FE learning through the medium of Welsh, which this Government wants to do something about, and therefore we need to look at the most effective ways of doing that. The future remit of what the ‘coleg’ will do, of course, is subject to that task and finish review group, and I don’t want to pre-empt anything that Delyth Evans’s group will come forward with. But, obviously, the future commissioning of some of these issues will, again, form part of the consultation with regard to the TEA. What was important to me at this stage was to secure the funding for the ‘coleg’ going forward in the short-to-medium term, so that there was some certainty about their work.

With regard to representation—again, the details of how exactly the TEA and the board will look—it would be my expectation that if we were to have an organisation that truly is learner focused and learner centered, we would want all stakeholders to have a seat around that and be able to hear from those voices, and that would include the student voice. That would include the student voice in the way that it is heard in HEFCW, in the current arrangements, and I don’t see this in any way as an attempt to water down the student voice, or to water down the voice of the people who are delivering the services.

With regard to the other issues, Professor Graeme Reid’s review will identify research and innovation strengths in Wales, and outline how these assets can be used more effectively by business, by communities and, indeed, by the Government itself. We know, because of changes arising out of the Higher Education and Research Bill 2016-17 in England, there are potential issues around research and how we organise research, so we want Graeme Reid to look at this to make sure, again, we’re getting the best value for money and how we can protect Welsh interests at this changing time.

With regard to the other review about outcomes, this is the issue as we—. In some ways, we monitor schools to death. We spend a lot of time worrying about level 2 plus inclusives and what children get in their GCSEs and performance measures. We spend less time worrying about what the outcomes look like at A-level and we spend less time looking at the outcomes of work based learning opportunities, so this is about making sure that there is the same rigour in terms of progress and moving forward in all aspects of learning than just the specific sectors we tend to look at at the moment. This is not an attempt to introduce TEF into Wales. You will be aware that I have not ruled out Welsh universities and institutions participating in TEF—it is their decision to do so—but I do note the move by many Scottish institutions recently to say that they will not be participating in TEF because there are grave concerns about how the TEF framework is developed in England, and what that means for institutions. It is a matter for individual Welsh institutions, but this is not an attempt to introduce TEF, but it is to make sure that we have rigorous systems to check the outcomes that learners are getting and that Welsh Government is getting for its investment.