I’m contributing instead of Llyr Huws Gruffydd, although I appreciate that Llyr would have been much more involved in the discussions than myself—I’ve actually just read the report today. I do appreciate many of the comments that have been made here today, but I think, having read the report, I may come from a different perspective on many of the issues. I agreed with what the Cabinet Secretary said about the fact that the groups are not homogeneous, and I think sometimes some of the recommendations may look upon ethnic minorities and black and other groupings in a more negative light than you anticipated. For example, it says in the report from which the Minister quoted that Indian families and similar families—. I’ve got a strong connection to Indian communities in Cardiff and I think that if we potentially nurture the fact that they are very hardworking, they’re driven, they often go into very highly driven careers—I think, perhaps, we can turn it around and say, ‘Well, how can we use the ethnic minority pupils in a positive way to share those experiences with those who may not be as successful?’, as opposed to saying, ‘Well, yes, they’re not doing as well as other pupils’ and that we need a specific thing to target them alone.

I’m conscious of wanting everybody to have fair play within the classroom, coming from a family of teachers, and I’d want to be able to allow those teachers to teach in a way that they feel that the collective in the classroom can be part of the same type of educational proposals. So, yes, I think teachers should be aware of Gypsies and Travellers and their communities; yes, I think, of course, we should be aware of different cultures, but I don’t think that we should be saying they should be taught in a different way or that they should have potentially—well, I don’t know what the specific is because I couldn’t see what the specific recommendations were in the committee report to say, ‘Well, actually X, Y and Z needs to be done for those particular groupings’.

So, for example, I’ve worked quite a lot with refugee children in Neath Port Talbot, and I’ve said to the headteachers there, ‘Well, little Johnny can’t get to school because the parents can’t afford to get there’ and they said to me ‘Well, yes, I’d like to put in extra provision for them to get here, but if I do that I have to do that for everybody.’ And I think that if we’re going to be making changes, I think we have to look at it in a wider way so that we don’t exclude anybody from any changes. I totally acknowledge that there may be very fundamental issues with different groupings of people, but I don’t know if we want to facilitate difference. I think we want to facilitate trying to collectively work together. Perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps Llyr will be annoyed with what I’m saying here today, but I think sometimes we can focus on negatives. We have to see the wealth of experience and the family backgrounds that people come from, from other countries, where, actually their work ethics, dare I say it—controversially—are better than ours. They want to get out and work, and they want to engage positively with society.

Like with any grant, I think, in a general way we need to be able to ensure that we track how positive it is and we track where the money is going. And I think if I agree with anything in the report, I agree with that. We have to understand, now that change has been made, that we are able to say, ‘Well, actually, this will lead to improvements for our young people’. But we have to acknowledge that teachers are under massive strain, and if we’re going to be putting specific proposals in as a result of this report, then it has to be done with that work pressure in mind.