Thank you very much to Michelle Brown for her questions. With regard to the recommendations, I have indicated that I’m accepting the recommendations. The consultation will take place in the spring. To give effect to this, I will need to bring forward legislation and that needs to find its way into the timetable of general legislation across the entire Government. But as I indicated earlier, I’m hopeful that we can do that, this entire process—the consultation, the proper scrutiny processes of legislation that the Bill will need to go through in this Chamber—in the period of three years.

I’m not responsible for the actions of the previous Ministers, but I should point out that it was a previous Minister that commissioned this report, having identified the need to make progress in this area. It should also be noted that, not a similar attempt, but an attempt in this agenda was made in the early days of the National Assembly for Wales, but unfortunately we did not have the legislative powers to create this authority. I remember those days very well, when we struggled to create that single entity because of the lack of ability within this Chamber to make the changes that we wanted to be made. Now, that is no longer a reason for no action. We have the powers there. We said, when we got those powers, they would be powers with a purpose and I am applying those to the purpose of reforming this particular part of education.

Parity of esteem—it’s an issue that has dogged us. As we’ve just heard from Huw Irranca-Davies, some of that is cultural. Some of that we’re guilty of ourselves in our own daily lives and the conversations that we’ve had with our children. The aim of this system, as I explained to Paul Davies in response to his question, is to create a structure that does promote parity of esteem. But I’ll tell you one way we do not promote parity of esteem is dividing children up at the age of 11 into whether they do vocational or academic qualifications. This system will allow children to pursue both routes, if that is what they want to do, to move seamlessly between vocational and work-based learning, between practical education and the more academic routes. That’s the whole purpose of being able to bring these routes together, because there is nothing—nothing—that promotes parity of esteem in saying to an 11-year-old, ‘You are going one way and your friend is going the other’, and dividing those children at that time.