Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. May I also welcome your statement this afternoon and welcome, once again, that digital competence is a cross—curricular aspect and a central part of education planning by this Government? Plaid Cymru, of course, in the past has called for digital literacy to be placed on an equal footing with numeracy and literacy, and clearly we therefore welcome every move in that direction.

May I also bear witness, as a parent, to the success of Hwb? Certainly, in our house, the children are far more willing to go and do their work on Hwb rather than getting to grips with their books. One would recognise that we need both, of course, but certainly its contribution is very great, and one to be welcomed, and once that can be built on further, as the Cabinet Secretary has already suggested.

As we’ve heard, getting broadband to more schools is one thing, of course. Ensuring that the infrastructure is in place is another thing. But, of course, what is also needed is to ensure that the hardware is available, because I know of one school, for example, where if more than two pupils are using an iPad at the same time, then the whole system will crash. But in having broadband in place, then you need 20 pupils all using iPads, but the school doesn’t have 20 iPads. Therefore, we need capital investment in buying equipment to take full advantage of that new infrastructure that will be put in place.

In a climate where school budgets are reducing, I know of another school, for example, where they need to spend £5,000 to £7,000 on purchasing equipment if they are going to go into an agreement with another provider for IT services. That can be difficult. So, I don’t know what consideration the Cabinet Secretary has given to possibly creating some sort of fund or providing some practical support to the schools who will need to take full advantage of the broadband capacity that will be available to them, in order to ensure that their pupils get the maximum benefit from that investment.

I have also heard the point about the fact that some people don’t have access to the internet, but there are others who have access to the internet at home but it’s not good enough. I am one of them. My children have often started to work on Hwb but have failed to complete their work because the broadband provision isn’t sufficient to maintain their session. So, that question remains. You refer in your statement to parental engagement. Well, the engagement that I get with Hwb is one of complete frustration when the system doesn’t work because of those problems. We may hear more about that in a later statement.

I don’t need to remind you, but a workforce survey by the Education Workforce Council recently found that ICT and digital skills was one of the areas where the workforce was saying that they feel that they need far more training—46 per cent, I think, said that they felt that they needed enhanced training in this area.

Now, you did refer to opportunities that are to be announced next week, perhaps, but I would like to know what arrangements are in place to ensure that this potential is fully delivered, because time for training is the issue that I’ve raised with you in the past. It’s difficult to see—if we are to make full use of the opportunities before us, then we must ensure that the workforce has the necessary skills, particularly when we’re talking about the development of coding, and more activities around that, which require a higher level of skill in this particular area.