Thank you very much, Darren. I guess a cautious welcome is the best I could have hoped for from Darren Millar, given previous statements that he's made on this subject.

Can I say that it is my intention—indeed, it is a requirement placed upon me by Standing Orders—that there will be a full consultation on these issues, with Wales and anybody in Wales who has an interest in this regard? My officials will commence work immediately to develop the draft regulations and the statutory guidance to enable that consultation to take place. I expect that to be done in a timely fashion. I want to make progress, but, Darren, you will be aware from previous attempts by previous Ministers with regard to this agenda that they have usually elicited a great deal of response, so I anticipate that this will be a very busy time. I don't want to say that I will definitely get it done by the end of the year, because we'll have to wait and weigh up all the responses that come in, and because I'd want it to be a genuine consultation and to reflect all the views that come in. But work will begin immediately in this regard. That consultation will indeed give the home educating community, as well as local authorities and children themselves, an opportunity to feed into the process in terms of the regulations, the statutory guidance and what a comprehensive package of support will look like for home-educating parents.

I am aware that there will be some home-educating parents who feel that they don't need support or they don't want it, but I am aware that there are some home-educating parents who do want support, and who have found it frustrating that oftentimes local authorities perhaps have washed their hands of those children and then access to examinations has been difficult—a whole host of things. We want to work with that community to identify a package of support, should families wish to avail themselves of it.

Darren did ask a genuine question about the fact that, 12 months ago, we did non-statutory guidance, and why move. Well, research in this field is continually being developed, so we have been in receipt of the Cascade report that has been done that identified yet again that we really do not have a handle on the size of the home-educating population. We don't know what's going on, although we expect the trend to be going up. That makes very uneasy reading for me. Local authorities continue to correspond to say that they are finding it difficult to be able to fulfil their duties under ensuring that children are in receipt.  So, given that continuous feedback and continually looking, as I made a commitment to do last year—that we would continue to look at these issues—that's what I've continued to do, and I've come to the conclusion that this is the appropriate way forward.

In terms of financial assessment, that will be developed alongside the statutory regulations. We've already made a small amount of funding available to the WLGA to begin to work up some of the costs, and to get some feedback from them on how a database could be managed and the costs associated. So, we've already done a little bit of seed-corn funding to be able to better inform us as we go forward in this research. Of course, again, Standing Orders would require me to be able to satisfy Members with a financial assessment alongside the legislation. 

I'm grateful for the open-mindedness that Darren has come to the Chamber with today to look at how we can improve this system, which I do believe gives us a good balance between the rights of a parent to choose to home educate if they wish, and the rights of a child to have an adequate and suitable education.