Thank you very much, Simon. Can I begin where you began with regard to ‘The Guardian’ article? I am absolutely dismayed by the misleading headline and by the factual inaccuracies that pepper that particular so-called piece of journalism. It is very disappointing and it is a gross mischaracterisation of what is going on in that particular community and, indeed, the Welsh Government’s ambitions for Welsh-medium education. It is a matter of huge regret for me, and I can assure you, whenever these issues around the language come up, whether that be the University of Warwick and how they view Welsh-language A-levels, or articles like this, then we will look to correct and give the correct impression of what is going on in our bilingual education system.

If I could move on to the substantive points with regard to the statement—yes, it is absolutely the Government’s intention to gain more research money into Wales. We have some absolute stars. Our Seren programme, for instance, gives us a really good example of what can be achieved, but we need to do better. That is particularly important given the consequences of an EU Brexit on the higher education sector. Obviously, so that’s—. I’m very happy to restate that is the Government’s overall aim.

With regard to alignment, I do believe that Diamond is aligned with the proposals that are set out here and I don’t have any intentions to change the timescales with regard to the implementation of the Diamond report. It is important that we see that and the Reid review as well as the Government’s White Paper on implementing Hazelkorn to dovetail together.

With regard to—I can’t read my own writing—. With regard to sixth-form governance—. The issue with sixth forms is a really interesting one, around the issue of governance, because, actually, Simon says about the role of local education authorities—in some ways sixth forms have become nobody’s child, because they’re not actually funded by the local education authorities. They’re funded from direct money from the Welsh Government. So, in a way, local government have almost washed their hands of them. Also, it has not been subject to Estyn inspection. So, when Estyn have gone into schools—even when that school has a sixth form—it has not been the job of Estyn to report on the provision within that sixth form. That’s not acceptable to me. If we want to see an increase and a raising of standards in all aspects of our education system, that has to include sixth forms. So, I’m very pleased to say that Estyn will now be looking at sixth-form provision in those schools that have them, because I think, in some ways, as I’ve said, they’ve become nobody’s child and maybe they have fallen through the net when it comes to really making sure that they’re doing a good job on behalf of the students that are in them.

The funding certainties—that’s what I can’t read: funding certainties and a three-year funding cycle. I recognise that sometimes institutions would make different decisions if they had a longer-term view of funding that was made available to them. In some ways, those may be better long-term strategic decisions. I am trying, in discussion with my Cabinet colleague for finance, to do what we can to provide certainty of funding wherever possible, in all aspects of the education system. That’s really been quite difficult because of, sometimes, situations out of our control with regard to when budgets and autumn statements are announced in London. Obviously, there’s grave uncertainty at the moment. I had hoped, following the election result and some of the utterances by the Prime Minister, that the foot would be taken off the austerity pedal. But, if one listens to the Chancellor’s Mansion House speech this morning, if any of us had any beliefs that that was about to happen, I think those probably have been dispelled by what Philip Hammond had to say this morning. I take your point, and we will look to see what we can do to provide that longer-term view for institutions, because I recognise how valuable that is for them.

I have no plans at present to look at raising the compulsory education age beyond 16. With regard to quality assurance, this body will have a key role. Unlike some of the changes that we’ve seen in England, for instance, we’re very keen to continue to involve the Privy Council, for instance, in quality assurance, degree-awarding status, university title. These things are very important to me and I’m going to use this opportunity to make sure that they are where we would want them to be and make changes, if necessary, to provide that assurance—to both students, international students, and would-be investors in research and innovation—that we have that quality underpinning our HE sector.