You're absolutely right, Darren. North Wales are in the very fortunate position where there are strong links between individual schools, the regional consortium, GwE, and Bangor University, which look at specific classroom practice and the impact that that has on children. GwE have agreed to take on a leading role across the other consortia to develop similar programmes of linkages between research and school-based practice.

You'll also be aware of the work going on at the moment with Trinity Saint David, the University of Glasgow and schools with regard to the research underpinning our new curriculum. It would be great to have more universities engaged in such research and I hope that, by clearly identifying this in the GwE consortium and urging them to share best practice and to take a lead on this for other areas, we will see further developments, because the work is very strong and it's very valuable to practitioners.