Deputy Presiding Officer, you want me to give short answers, but those are big questions—big, big questions. On higher-level teaching assistants, you’re quite right. They are a crucial part of our workforce, and we have seen the development of higher-level teaching assistants over the last Assembly term and we want to accelerate the number of teaching assistants that can access those training opportunities to raise their qualifications, and, as I said in an answer earlier, ultimately, whilst the academy initially will look at school leaders and potential leaders, we want the academy to look at leadership at all levels, including teaching assistants. With regard to school-to-school working, it’s absolutely crucial, as part of the self-improving system, that we provide those opportunities for people to see what good looks like.

Sometimes, when you go to a school, it’s not because people want to get up and do a bad job in the morning, but actually they simply do not know what good looks like. Actually, giving them the opportunity to see what excellent leadership and what great teaching looks like is absolutely crucial. As part of our work on school-to-school working, that’s what we are focusing on: to give people the opportunity to mentor, to work together, to spend time in other schools, in people’s classrooms, to use the excellent practice that we already have, and to be much more sophisticated in how we do some of our professional learning. I said earlier about improving it; if you go to the Fern partnership, their professional learning is developed by live coaching. So, the classrooms are set up so that the teacher can be observed from a different room. With an earpiece in, they’re actively getting advice on professional learning as they’re delivering that lesson—you know, ‘Try this’, ‘Have you thought about this?’ So, we’re investing in that kind of support and professional learning—much better than what we used to have in the past.

On LEAs and consortia, that’s why we don’t want the academy to provide this themselves, because that will just be another player. Their job will be to broker and to ensure that the consortia, who will take a lead on this, are applying this. But we don’t want them to provide it themselves, because that would just add to the confusion of what is already, in my opinion, quite a crowded field.