Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for her statement this afternoon and, indeed, the advance copy of the OECD’s report yesterday, which I believe was shared with all of the political parties? I think what’s very clear, having read the report, is that not everything was as rosy as the picture that was painted back in December, when the Cabinet Secretary wrote to the Chair of the Children, Young People and Education Committee suggesting that the OECD was somehow vindicating her policy position, because it’s very clear that there is a sense of déjà vu effectively in the report because there are some things being said that are consistent with the things that were being said by a chorus of voices, including the OECD back in 2014, about a lack of clear leadership, about the need to raise the status of the profession, about the need to invest more in the quality of and access to continuing professional development, for example. I think that it is very concerning really that we are hearing these messages again so many years after they had been repeated in other reports.

That said, I think there are some very positive things as well that can be gleaned from the report and you’ve touched on a few of them in your statement. Some of the ones that you didn’t touch on, of course, related to a national funding formula, which was something that the OECD have said might be something that could be potentially taken forward. Both the Cabinet Secretary and I know that there’s significant variability from one local authority to the next in terms of the amount per head that’s spent on schooling and pupils. That is something that cannot be justified in terms of the investment that we need to make in our children and young people, and I would specifically ask the Cabinet Secretary what her initial assessment of that particular recommendation is about the need for a national funding formula.

I think also that I want to put on record a very warm welcome for the suggestion that we need to link evidence to policy. The Cabinet Secretary will know that I’ve expressed some concern about the lack of evidence that there is for the Cabinet Secretary’s aim to get early years class sizes down to 25, given the tens of millions of pounds that could be invested elsewhere in the education system to get a better bang for our buck. And I wonder, Cabinet Secretary, whether you will revisit your position on class sizes as a result of the comment in the OECD’s report that we need to have a clear link between evidence and education policy. Can you also tell us how that particular recommendation might help to shape the Reid review of higher education research that is ongoing? Because there’s no doubt that our higher education institutions can have a part to play in developing policy recommendations linked to the research that they do to put forward to both the National Assembly and the Welsh Government.

I also want to put on record our welcome for the OECD’s proposal to reduce the administrative burden on school leaders, in order to free them up to concentrate on raising standards in the teaching profession and supporting their colleagues. We know that it can be a significant distraction—the administrative duties that many headteachers face—and I think it is a very positive recommendation and suggestion that there needs to be investment in more business managers across the board in the Welsh education system. But I do wonder, Cabinet Secretary, what consideration you have given to how achievable that might be, given the fact that we’ve got a lot of small schools in Wales, and whether you think that the regional education consortia or, indeed, collaborative arrangements between smaller schools, might be a way forward in terms of giving the opportunity to invest in business management, in order that headteachers can focus on their educational leadership.

One of the things that is concerning in the report is that the OECD found that there was a lack of clear communication with the sector and with key stakeholders about how the education journey is going to proceed. The Cabinet Secretary will know from some of the evidence that the Children, Young People and Education Committee has received from people in the profession, and from other stakeholders, that there does appear to have been a bit of wooliness over how the new curriculum is going to be shaped, and whether the cart is being put before the horse in terms of not really understanding what the assessment framework is going to look like in the future. And I wonder what your response might be to the assertion from the OECD that we don’t have a clear narrative about the journey, and how you envisage being able to bring some shared ambitions and goals to the fore.