Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary. I welcome the announcement of the endowment fund for music that you’ve made today. I’m very supportive of any constructive ways that we can improve music tuition in schools and bring more children and young people into enjoying and loving and playing and taking part in music. I would like to ask you for some detail, though.

How long do you think that it will take before the fund is of a sufficient size to support the award of grants? Welsh Government is putting the seed money in, but how will you work to promote it among public and private organisations to encourage them to contribute to the fund? Extending the pupil deprivation grant is all very well and good, but a young person may not be entitled to free school meals and yet buying an instrument and paying for tuition may well be out of their parents’ grasp. How does the Cabinet Secretary propose to help such young people?

I note that the Cabinet Secretary boasts that £20 million is being spent on the Welsh Government’s creative learning though the arts plan. However, this plan seems to cover more than music. So, how much of that £20 million is being spent on music and actually going into music provision? What measures are you going to be introducing to ensure that funding intended to support music in schools is actually spent on music in schools?

Young people should be able to continue their music studies if they wish after school, particularly those young people who are musically gifted. How is the Welsh Government supporting music in the community so that people can continue with their music once they leave school? It’s great to teach young people the skills of how to play an instrument and to learn a love of music, but we don’t really want to kill it dead right at the end of school age. We want to be able to encourage people to continue that and to bring their music into the community. So, how are you going to be supporting music in the community so that people can continue with their music once they leave school?

The task and finish group made a number of recommendations around terms and conditions of service provision, cost of music provision, communication of local authority preferred delivery model, et cetera. How is the Cabinet Secretary addressing the problems and issues outlined in the report of the task and finish group?

And then, finally, I do totally support your objective to improve access to music in schools. This fund, hopefully, will go a way to support that. But, there really isn’t any substitute for qualified and passionate music tuition in schools themselves. Therefore, what measures are you going to be taking to encourage trainee teachers to study music education at teacher training level and to encourage musically gifted people into the teaching profession in the first place? Thank you.