Thank you very much. Well, sorry to disappoint you, Minister, it’s me who’s going to be winding you up—sorry, winding the debate up. Parity of esteem—that’s what we’ve been talking about today, until it sort of all lost its way in the last few minutes there. I think it’s an important point to make that this was quite a consensual debate, and for a very good reason as well: parity of esteem is good for the economy, it’s good for the colleges and the universities, and, most importantly, it is good for our citizens. The sum of the parts—let’s add those up to be even greater. Let’s make sure that parity of esteem does mean that we end up with a whole that’s better than the sum of our parts.

Actually, our education system has kind of reflected that in recent years; at least in the pre-16 sector. I thought Jeremy Miles’s contribution on the Netherlands was very illustrative of this: post 16, we are still operating pretty much in silos here in Wales and perhaps it would be fair to say, in the UK generally. Of course, the Welsh Conservatives made a manifesto commitment to university technical colleges, which actually captured some of the points that you were making there, Jeremy, but unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to let Wales see the benefits on that.

We, of course, had this rush to university education absolutely right, in the sense that no-one should be prevented from following their best path for reasons of geography or finance, but it did end up tipping the scales in favour of young people feeling obliged to go to university regardless of aptitude, and on the back of parental opportunities, as Llyr mentioned—I experienced it as well—and perhaps teaching to exams, to a certain degree, as well. I think both Oscar and David were absolutely right on this. Opportunity is what a young person needs—an opportunity that is appropriate to them. That’s why, Llyr, I have no problem with you talking about apprenticeships over and over. I think they’ve been a massively important reintroduction into the offer to our young people. We’ve devalued further education and other vocational experiences as something that persists even now, despite further education institutions being able to offer a huge range of types of education for young people. I mean, in many places, they have a university on the doorstep now, where higher education provision has been brought into them, as well as A-levels, which we’re familiar with, and of course engagement and level 1 education, which are part of stopping some of our young people being left behind altogether.

The main message, I think, that’s come through today, apart from the ambitions of further education and its skilfulness at re-describing itself, if you like, through a partnership, is this—and it’s been raised by many Members, including John Griffiths—and that is the second chance. I think it would be fair enough to say that it’s the first chance, actually, in the case of some of those whose school experience didn’t work for them. David Melding pointed out that people change their careers, they change their jobs throughout their lives, and sometimes that’s not done willingly. I’m thinking of Tata in my region, for example. The Welsh Government has committed quite a significant amount of money to re-training people who lose their jobs at Tata. These are people who perhaps haven’t done any new training in years. We need our further education colleges to do that—part-time as well. You ask anyone with caring responsibilities about the importance of part-time provision when it comes to improving your life chances.

In the case of a friend of mine, she left school at 16, she worked in a shop, had a child and was left by her partner. Needing legal advice, she became interested in the law—a pretty common experience, actually. She took a part-time foundation course at her local college. She got great marks, got a place to study law at university—also part-time—did her legal practice course, her training contract and joined a firm. She now writes the College of Law’s recommended reading on medical negligence, and she earns a fortune. It only happened because her college was funded well enough to run a part-time course. I don’t think that course even runs anymore.

Are you being generous to me, Deputy Presiding Officer?