Thank you for your statement, Cabinet Secretary, which certainly represents a step in the right direction. The statement’s entitled ‘recruitment of teachers’, but I can’t really see where you’re talking about the recruitment of teachers generally in addressing the fundamental problems that have been identified with recruiting teachers into Wales. I see three concrete announcements in the statement, the first being the Welsh-medium incentive, which I think is a great idea. It’s only right and proper that Welsh Government should encourage education through the medium of Welsh, and we’re well-acquainted in this Chamber with the shortage of those teachers. Obviously, I fully support your objective on this, as I do your measure to introduce computer science to qualify for a higher incentive.

Coming to the funding for schools-based cluster arrangements, this does sound like a really good idea, but there’s no detail—. I know you’ve given some detail today, Cabinet Secretary, but there’s very little—no detail in your statement itself. So, you know, if pupils and schools are able to build working relationships with a regular set of supply teachers, instead of the supply teacher often being a total stranger, that’s much better for the supply teacher, the school and the pupils. So, how do you envisage the clusters working in practice? Do you see the local authority—? Is it to be a cluster per local authority or are the local authorities going to cluster together? How’s it actually going to work on the ground as you see it?

I note that you want to employ a bank of supply teachers, which I think, again, like I said, is a good idea. But we don’t want newly qualified teachers to end up as long-term supply teachers, so I would like to see some sort of proposal or to hear about what work you’re doing to make sure that doesn’t happen. I mean, obviously, working as a supply teacher’s going to be a very useful way for a newly qualified teacher to pick up experience, so I’m not going to knock the supply teacher route at all.

You’ve said, and it’s been covered a little bit already, that only 15 local authorities involving 86 schools are being funded to run this cluster arrangement. I kind of gathered from the conversations today that it’s a pilot, but, you know, what are the criteria going to be for you awarding the funding? You’ve specified a pot of £2.7 million. How’s that going to be apportioned between the clusters? Who’s going to make the decision about how much each cluster gets? And how’s it actually going to work? Are these local authorities going to have to apply for the funding or are you going to make a decision based on certain criteria, and, in that case, what are the criteria likely to be? Do you think as well that you’re likely to roll this system out to the local authorities that currently aren’t being covered?

Okay. It concerns me that, according to EWC figures, over 80 per cent of newly registered teachers in Wales are working on a fixed-term or supply basis. I don’t see any measures to address this in your statement, so perhaps you could say a little bit in response to that. I don’t see any proposals to address the negative publicity about the quality of training in Wales or the perception of students that the profession’s getting harder and that the profession is unattractive. Those aren’t my words; those are the words of the EWC, by the way. The number of new registrations for school teachers is lower in this year than it’s ever been since 2004. And, although the statement does claim to be announcing innovative solutions to the problem, aside from the three measures already discussed, there isn’t much else. So, I would like to hear what other work you’re doing to address the fundamental problems and disincentives to training teachers in Wales that have been identified by the EWC and others. Thank you.