Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. On Monday, I had the great privilege of visiting Adamsdown Primary School, just up the road here, in the community of Splott. Thanks to the Welsh Government investment of £2.8 million, pupils and teachers there are benefiting from a new extension to the school and significantly improved outdoor facilities in response to a significant growth in demand for school places in that part of the city. In discussion with the headteacher, Mrs Thomas, and meeting staff and pupils, I was struck by the commitment to high expectations for all learners across what is a transient and diverse pupil population. This included pupils from refugee backgrounds, and I was delighted and moved to meet a young boy from Syria. Paralysed from the waist down, we can only begin to imagine the trauma that that little boy has witnessed in his life. Indeed, when we first arrived at school, he arrived in a pram, not even a proper wheelchair. But, with the English that he has learned, he has told me about how his education at Adamsdown, how the Welsh education system, was pushing him forward and allowing him to set new goals and ambitions. He told me about the new sounds that he was learning that day.

Presiding Officer, no-one in this Chamber needs to tell me how hard our teachers are working day in, day out on behalf of the children and young people of Wales. And no-one needs to tell me that we must battle for every penny to get to that front line in the face of continuing austerity from the Tories in Westminster. And no-one needs to tell me that we do indeed need to bring together all of our partners in a mission to raise standards for all and ensure we continue to properly fund our schools and our teachers.

So, firstly, I'd like to set a few things straight. Collectively, as a Government, we have done our very best to maximise resources going to local authorities, whether that's been in the overall total given to them in the revenue support grant, or in the introduction and implementation of a funding floor to ensure that some local authorities enjoy better protection from cuts than otherwise would be because of the funding formula.

Now, the formula for distributing core funding to local authorities is developed and agreed in consultation with local government through the Partnership Council for Wales and its sub-group. Within this system, there exists the potential to make significant changes to the funding formula, but this must be done with a collective buy-in from local government through the partnership arrangements that we have in place. To date, we have not received a consistent message on this from our local government partners, but we will continue—