Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I move this motion on school funding in the name of Plaid Cymru. May I say, at the very outset, that I am not blind to the reality of austerity, and you will note that this isn’t a motion that says, ‘Just give more funding to schools’? But neither am I deaf to the warnings coming from the sector that we are reaching a point, after years of cuts and reducing budgets, with costs, of course, often increasing, where it is now unsustainable to continue to provide the level of service that we have come to expect over the years. And, of course, it’s not just me saying that. Each and every one of you, I’m sure, as Assembly Members, will have received correspondence from headteachers, governors, parents, councillors, teaching unions, all saying the same thing. They, of course, are now using the words ‘funding crisis’ openly in this context.

So, what is the reality of funding? Well, we know that school budgets and the per-pupil funding has reduced in real terms over the past years. In this academic year, the education budget in Wales has fallen, from £1.7 billion in 2016-17, to £1.6 billion. According to BBC Cymru Wales, school budgets have reduced by around £370 per pupil in real terms in six years. We know that 10 years ago the average individual school budget per pupil was some £3,500 per annum. In the last financial year, the budget of individual schools, on average per pupil, was £4,234. And, by the way, there was a difference of up to £1,000 between some counties in that figure, which tells us another story about the funding situation, and we might come to that during the course of this debate. But if per-pupil expenditure had risen with inflation, of course, it would be quite a bit higher. Indeed, it would be almost £400 higher per pupil. Therefore, that is a reflection of the real-term cut that we have seen. It's no surprise, therefore, that school budgets have become unstable and that there's a risk that the education of those pupils will suffer unless urgent steps are taken to tackle this funding crisis.