I’m always very nervous when Vikki gets up to ask questions having been a recent practitioner, but Vikki will know that one of the unintended consequences of early entry can be—and it’s alluded to in the report—a narrowing of the curriculum, so that all the lessons become about is getting that child through an exam. Now, don’t get me wrong, exams are crucially important, but education is about more than that and we need to ensure that all our children have access to the broad and balanced curriculum that is underpinned by law in this country. We also know, and this was alluded to by Paul Davies, that, again, another unintended consequence and the impact of early entry is lost teaching time. That can be in the issue of pupils lower down the school, whose teachers are displaced to get children ready for a continuous set of external exams, or it can be at the expense of subjects not English, Welsh or maths. And as a history teacher, I’m sure Vikki might have been aware of that, where certain subjects are regarded, perhaps, as less important and lesson time for those subjects gets squeezed. Again, that’s an unintended consequence of some of these practices, which I hope these changes today will alleviate.

I have asked Estyn to look at how schools have approached the implementation of the new GCSEs and how they have coped with that change. The report acknowledges that those changes to GCSEs has been one of the main drivers for such a large increase in early entry and we will be reflecting on that. We will continue to ask our challenge and review advisers, as part of the consortia who are our school improvement arm and muscle, to review this when they meet with their individual schools about what decisions and what choices schools are making with regard to how they apply early entry. I hope to be making an announcement on specific additional support for MAT later on.