Can I thank the Chair for her opening speech and commend her for the way in which she led this inquiry, and also thank on the record the clerks and the witnesses who provided evidence to the committee? I think it was important that we undertook this piece of work, and that's why the committee agreed that this should be an early priority in terms of the committee's work programme. I know all too well, and I've often criticised, the large number of grants that have been available, particularly when I was Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and used by the Government in order to direct and deliver on their policy objectives. So, I can completely understand why the Government sought to amalgamate these grants in order to reduce the administrative burden on local education authorities and, indeed, on the Welsh Government in terms of taking things forward. But I am concerned that there’s been a lack of follow-up in terms of the Welsh Government trying to determine whether the outcomes that it wanted to achiever are still actually being delivered on the ground. That’s why we undertook this piece of work as a committee, and I was very happy to support it.

We know that educational attainment, particularly for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, are not as good as they should be. They have improved recently, which is a positive thing, but there’s still this huge attainment gap with their peers in schools, and that’s not good enough. We’ve got to address that. And that’s the purpose of part of this grant, as is the need to close the gap in terms of some of the different ethnic minority groups and the educational attainment and achievement of them too.

I think what really struck me was the fact that we have a patchwork of provision in Wales that is very inconsistent. I was very taken with some of the evidence that we received from Gwent, where, quite clearly, they have pretty much a gold standard in terms of what they’re able to provide in terms of support particularly for those from ethnic minorities who are moving into the locality. And I was really taken with the fact that that is adding significant value and supporting individual schools, particularly where they have no expertise available to them. But the situation was very different in other parts of Wales, and I think it’s fair to say that some of the regional consortia just do not have a grip on what’s going on in their areas and that this has been a very low priority for them. That was very concerning indeed.

I was also particularly concerned about the evidence that we received from Estyn. Estyn were very helpful in providing evidence to us; they’ve obviously done some work in the past, particularly on the Gypsy/Traveller community and their attainment levels. But what was abundantly clear was that they had produced a couple of reports with some clear recommendations in them but they had not followed those reports up. Now, frankly, for the education inspectorate not to have followed up their recommendations is completely unacceptable. They said that it was a resource issue and that’s why they hadn’t followed it up, but, frankly, I think there can be no excuse for the inspectorate not taking up this issue more vigorously both with the Welsh Government and local education authorities. So, I’d be grateful if the Cabinet Secretary could just outline what role she expects Estyn to play in the future in terms of making sure that some of the policy direction of the Government is actually being delivered on the ground and that they’re taking their responsibility as an inspectorate to do just that.

Some of the other things that are referenced in the report are the lack of support for young people post 16 who want to continue with their education. We know that having older peers is often a very important factor in supporting young people in taking an interest in their learning, and, again, particularly Gypsy/Traveller community-background young people are not going on to further education or higher education, and yet there’s no specific support for them at the moment. I’d be very interested, Cabinet Secretary—and I know I raised this during the committee proceedings with you—but I’d be very interested to know whether there’s anything that can be done within the review of student support that is under way at the moment to specifically target these groups in order to encourage active participation in post-16 learning by young people from black backgrounds in particular, Afro-Caribbean backgrounds, and the Gypsy/Traveller communities—those ones that fall well behind in terms of some of these particular outcomes.

And I think all the recommendations in the report, if they’re taken as a whole, will actually deliver some sea change in improvement in this area in the future, and no doubt the committee will want to continue to look at this in terms of outcomes in the future to see whether our recommendations have been implemented in full. I acknowledge that one of them has been resisted, as it were, but I know that the Minister’s heart is in absolutely the right place in terms of wanting to deliver some sea change. So, I would be grateful if particularly you could talk about the post-16 issue and the role of Estyn in response to the committee’s report today. Thank you.