Can I thank Darren for his comments and questions? I’m glad that he used the early opportunity that he had to read the report yesterday to good effect. If I could go through them, when I got up in response to the PISA results in December, I never pretended for one moment that everything in the garden was rosy. I reflected—[Interruption.] And I reflected on the quotes that were given that day in the initial feedback that the OECD provided to us in terms of this report. If I thought that everything was fine then I wouldn’t have asked the OECD to come back. I wanted an honest, independent of Government, assessment of where we are. What the report says is that we are making some progress. And let’s be absolutely clear that it does that, because I think we need to be fair to the profession and acknowledge the efforts that the profession has made. In terms of professional learning and teaching, they say that

‘Wales deserves recognition for making so much progress in developing and implementing’ change in that area. It talks about the fact that we are stand-out, internationally, with regard to the work that we have done on digital technology and the digital competence framework. But the report is also absolutely clear that there is a huge amount of work still to be done, and I don’t shy away from that at all.

With regard to business management, you’re right, the report talks about the bureaucratic burden that we place on our headteachers, and I recognise that. It’s something that I hear consistently from them. The primary focus of a headteacher in schools should be on the teaching and learning that goes on in that establishment. Things that detract from that impact negatively on their ability to do it. Whether that’s the headteacher I met recently who spends a great deal of time struggling just simply to open the school in the morning because the school is in such a bad state of repair, or that headteacher who struggles to engage in other services—whether that be social services or CAMHS—to get the services they need for their children, that’s detracting from teaching and learning, as well as the bureaucracy around running a school. Business managers, I do believe, have a significant role to play and you are right that the benefit that that has can be particularly impactful in small and rural schools, where many of our headteachers would have a large teaching responsibility, in the primary sector, especially. You will be aware that in April of this year local authorities will have access to a small and rural schools grant, and the guidance that will go with those resources will specifically give business managers as an example of what we would expect local authorities to be spending this money on. A business manager supporting a network, a group of small, rural primary schools, can take that burden off that headteacher so that they can concentrate on teaching and learning. But, of course, that shouldn’t be restricted to rural schools. There is a case to be made, and indeed it has been for a number of years, on the value of business managers, or, in old-fashioned terms, the bursar-type role within schools.

With regard to research, one of the things that has been identified in a number of previous reports is the need to engage in high-quality research. That’s why, in reforming their initial teacher education provision, we would expect university programmes to have a high level of engagement with research, and we will be running, later on in March, a workshop led by the OECD that will bring together the profession and world-renowned experts to develop some of the pedagogical approaches that we will need to implement the new curriculum. So, that’s just one example of how we’re trying to bring that international research and knowledge into the system in Wales.

The Member talks about resources, financial resources. Let me be absolutely clear: I believe that there is a role for local democracy and locally elected individuals making decisions about the resources that are needed to deliver local services, but I also want as much money as I can get into the front line of services. For instance, that’s why PDG is passported straight to schools. I will give consideration to all aspects of the recommendations here, but, at this stage, I have not seen more evidence that a national funding formula is the right approach. What’s really important is, when the OECD talk about resources, they do so, yes, in monetary terms—because, obviously, that’s very necessary—but they also talk about deploying our human resources in a smarter and a better way.

Are we confident that not only are we spending our £91 million next year on PDG, but we are getting our very best teachers into the toughest schools? Are we getting our very best school leaders into our schools in the communities that need the most help? This isn’t just about financial resources; it’s about the smarter use of deployed resources. And I have to say, Darren, decisions to cut school budgets across the border that you will be aware of are impactful on the ability of us here to spend money, because we get a Barnett share of money that’s spent on education, and if the Government across the border cuts money to schools, which it will do next year to the tune of £3 billion, then that has an impact on our ability to respond. But that should never be an excuse for not taking forward action, and that was my clear message today. It does mean that we need to be smarter in how we deploy our money, and we need to make the right choices.

I would refer you, with regard to the class sizes, to the OECD’s report in 2016, just last year, that said that those students in smaller classes reported consistently that their teachers were able to differentiate their teaching to allow them to respond to those individual needs at a much higher level than those classes that had more students. This morning, in the conference, Andreas Schleicher talked about and highlighted, as a country that we should emulate, that we should want to be like, Ontario—a region, not a country; it’s not a country on its own. A bilingual education system, teaching children in French and in English, some significant challenges with regard to the nature of the children who are in that system—Ontario was held up as an example to me this morning, and Ontario has had a long-standing class reduction policy in that nation, which that Government has implemented.

More able and talented: you’re absolutely right. If PISA tells us anything, it is that our children at the more able and talented end are not performing as well as they could. Our lesser performing children are now up to the OECD average; we have worked very hard and we’ve brought those children up, but we have not stretched the most able and talented. You’ll be aware of our Seren programme, and that is having some effect. I’m interested in learning the lessons to bring that further down the school age group, because, post 16, it’s too late; we need to be able to move that down. I’ll be giving further consideration and making further announcements of how we can focus on the more able and talented, and part of that is around our accountability regime.

In a way, our focus on level 2 plus, which—I understand why that decision was taken and it was probably the right decision to take at the time where we found ourselves, but the unintended consequence of that has been to focus on students getting Ds to Cs, and we’ve seen an improvement in that, but we have not seen a subsequent improvement in students who are getting Cs getting Bs, students who are getting Bs getting As, and A students getting A*s. And that’s a result of the accountability measures that previous administrations put in place. It’s a product of that system; it is now time to reflect on that and have an accountability regime that does not lead to those kinds of unintended consequences. I think that covers just about everything.