Thank you very much, Andrew, for the comprehensive list of questions. The strategy that was announced by the First Minister is the overarching plan for the Government. This document that is launched today adds the meat on the bones that you were asking for just last week, about how the ambitions that are in ‘Prosperity for All’ will actually be delivered. And I make no bones about it: there is too much variation within our education system. There is too much variation in schools. We see that as something that needs to be tackled. We see within a single school a department that is performing really well and a department that is performing less well. We also see variations between individual schools in the same local education authority; sometimes only a matter of miles apart, the results can be very different, and we have to iron that out.

Now, there are a number of ways in which this strategy seeks to raise standards across our entire system. Of course, the most important factor is the quality of teaching. That is the biggest thing that we can do to improve the educational attainment of our children, that is to ensure that the quality of teaching across all of our schools is consistently high. That’s why there is so much emphasis in this document about how we can raise the quality of teaching, whether that be reforming our initial teacher education system, whether that’s a new national approach to continuous professional learning, new teaching standards that are currently being adopted for both classroom teachers and headteachers. Our system cannot be better than the teachers who deliver it, and that’s why this is at the core of our programme.

You talked about the issue around schools challenge. You’ll know that that was a time-limited programme, limited to only 40 schools. There are lots of schools across Wales that need help and support to develop them. Some of those schools did very well under Schools Challenge Cymru, but I’m afraid to say, in some cases, despite the additional resource, that did not translate into better results for students and, indeed, one schools challenge school just before the summer holidays was put under special measures by Estyn. So, we need an approach to school improvement, delivered by our regional consortia, for all schools in Wales—right the way across our country, rather than just limited to 40 handpicked institutions.

You raise the issue of PISA. There is nothing inconsistent in this document and the statements that I and the First Minister gave in answers to questions on 20 and 21 June earlier this year. What’s absolutely clear is that, for the 2021 PISA assessment that will be administered by a different administration in a new Government, whose results will be published by a different administration, that remains the long-term goal. What I am focused on is making improvement in the tests that will be taken next year, because I haven’t changed my mind: our performance in PISA is not what we would want it to be and we need to see improvement, not in 2021—we need to see improvement before that.

Now, Andrew, you do raise a very legitimate point about the issue of roll-out within the secondary sector, and whether having to teach two curricula in the school will be challenging. It’s normal practice for teachers to translate curriculum requirements into schemes of work for each year group in their school; no teacher teaches the same lesson to each and every year group. So, this phased roll-out in secondary schools allows the teaching profession the time to develop their new schemes of work year on year. Now, our teachers and those who represent them understand this, and they are very supportive of this approach. And international best practice would tell you that a phased roll-out gives us the best chance for success. The last time we had a major change to the curriculum, of course, was back in 1988, which was done very much top down and done overnight. And I’m afraid if you speak to people who were involved in the delivery of that reform, they’ll say that it caused significant chaos. But I’m very glad that I will have the opportunity later this week to talk to Lord Baker, and I will reflect on his experience of how he felt that that top-down, overnight big bang actually worked out.

Leadership, I think, has been an area where we have not had sufficient focus. The reasons for that, you know, I’m not clear on and I’m not sighted on, but what I am clear on is that, if we are to see the improvements that we need, we have to have a focus on leadership, and that’s why we are introducing our new leadership academy. We’ll be reforming the qualification for our headteachers, with new leadership standards and more support for existing headteachers and those who aspire to headship, and as we see the leadership academy develop and bed in, I’d hope to see that focus on leadership go down the whole school system to focus on leaders of individual subjects or individual year groups—leadership in our regional consortia, leadership in local education authorities. This is a national mission. We’ve all got to challenge ourselves and ask: ‘What are we going to bring to the table to see this national mission realised?’ And there’s a place for all of us in that, including Members here in the Chamber whose scrutiny and challenge in the committee has been a very important part of my deliberations when looking to set up the timetable for the curriculum.

With regard to HE, can I just say that HE isn’t the be-all and end-all? It’s the right thing for some people, but this idea that everybody has to do HE and that, if you don’t, then somehow you are a failure—I think we need to move away from that. We have to look at education in the right setting, for the right people at the right time in their lives, and that might mean going on to training when you’re in the world of work 10 years after you’ve left school. It may be a higher level apprenticeship. It may be a degree-related apprenticeship. There are many ways in which you can fulfil your potential. HE is an important part of that, yes, for a certain cohort of our population.