I’m going to take the opportunity, too, to celebrate our successes as it is our national day today, and to take inspiration, as we’ve heard, from our history in tackling many of the challenges facing us today. The Member for Neath talked about our assets. Well, one of the major assets that we have as a nation, of course, is our people, and investing in our people, for example through the education system, is something that’s important for us, but it’s also something that we have an honourable tradition of doing, too. We have a history of innovation and enterprise in education—as much as any other sector that we will discuss today, I would argue.

We need only mention the name of Griffith Jones, Llanddowror, back at the beginning of the eighteenth century, to understand and appreciate that innovation—Griffith Jones and his circular schools educated children during the day and adults at evening, with those then going on to teach others. That cascading element of learning reached a point where there were 0.25 million people who had become literate, out of a population of less than 0.5 million. So, more than half the population were literate. And by the time that Griffith Jones passed away in 1761, Wales had the highest literacy level in the world, so much so that Catherine the Great of Russia sent a commissioner to Wales to learn lessons, and to see whether the system could be adapted for Russia. That may correspond not to us asking the OECD to come to tell us whether we’re on the right path, but to Wales telling the OECD what they should be telling other nations. That’s where we want to be, and, of course, that’s where we have been, in that specific chapter of our history anyway.

In 1889, then, the Welsh Intermediate Education Act was passed—legislation introduced by Welsh Members in Westminster that was revolutionary, because it meant that children, whatever their economic background or their academic ability, could attend a secondary school for the first time. We had to wait another 10 years before similar legislation was introduced for England. The success of the Act and the county schools was clear, with the historian K.O. Morgan—Lord Morgan—noting that,

Erbyn y Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf, gorchuddiwyd Cymru gan rwydwaith o gant o ysgolion uwchradd “sirol”, ac roedd ganddi system addysg uwchradd a oedd yn amlwg yn rhagflaenu’r un yn Lloegr.

The success of the Act could also be seen in the fact that secondary schools in England were few and far between where there was no teacher from Wales during the first half of the twentieth century, a time when Wales was exporting teachers. ‘A nation of teachers and preachers’ was the description at the time, and it would be no bad thing if we succeeded in recreating that today.

But, of course, our history these days is different: we have seen decline, unfortunately, not the progress that I’m sure each and every one of us would’ve been eager to see happening. We have seen the recent PISA results. The Estyn annual report also highlights the positives—we should acknowledge that: the outcomes of 16 per cent of secondary schools in Wales are excellent, higher than any time since 2010. But those that are not up to standard was also up to 14 per cent.

Now, the history of the development of education is very interesting, of course, and is one that we should take great pride in, but we have to acknowledge, hope and be confident that we are on the verge of another exciting time in the development of a Welsh education system, with many programmes in place to reform the education system, as we have discussed in this place many times. It’s not inevitable that Wales will have a system that is seen as falling behind other nations. We have led the way in the past and we can do so again. We will need to ensure, of course, that the Government has a clear vision and a clear focus on delivery in terms of the potential that we have, and I am one who supports the Government’s approach at the moment, although there may be some disagreement as to how certain elements are to be rolled out in terms of timing and so on. But, essentially, I am confident that we are moving in the right direction.

The OECD report praised the move away from introducing unconnected events. What we need to do now, of course, is to strengthen the vision for the long term, to continue on the path on which we are travelling. But in so doing, of course, we must ensure that the reforms in the pipeline are implemented effectively and ensure that everyone—from the teachers in the classroom to the consortia and the education authorities and everyone else—do understand where we’re going and buy into the vision, that everyone is clear about their role in that context, and that they know what their contribution is to the project and how all of that work comes together. But in doing that, we can be confident that everyone will be working in the same direction and that we will achieve our aims.