Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. This is an important topic and I'm grateful to the Cabinet Secretary for detained here this afternoon on a nice, sunny day. She and I have many political disagreements, but no-one can deny the spirit and commitment that she brings to her office as Cabinet Secretary for Education, and I certainly pay tribute to all that she has achieved in the years that she's been in this Assembly on her favourite topic, and I mean that as a genuine compliment. 

I've raised this issue once before at First Minister's questions and I've been pilloried by some for, as it appears, attempting to avoid discussion of controversial current affairs topics in schools, or trying to silence children. This is no part of my intention at all. I'm very much in favour of engaging young people in political discussion, but this must be done on an informed and balanced basis. One of the things that I was concerned about in relation to the Welsh baccalaureate is the global citizenship challenge and the way in which the curriculum appears to be devised, and the rather tendentious way in which this has been designed. 

Now, of course controversial topics are bound to be discussed in schools and, as I say, it is right that they should be, but when we deal with issues that are headlined, such as cultural diversity, fair trade, future energy, inequality, poverty, famine, migration, consumerism, and so on, these are all highly political topics, and in this place obviously we have vigorous debates about them. I'm not sure that we have vigorous debates in schools in quite the same way. Now, I'm not saying that schools are teaching these courses deliberately as political propaganda, but I am concerned that there isn't a sufficient diversity of view to make this a more balanced and open debate, and that's why I've decided to raise this this afternoon.

I'd like to give some examples. In a document called 'Skills Knowledge', which is produced—unfortunately I've forgotten my glasses and I can't read the top—. Sorry, here we are; they have come to my rescue. There we go—produced by the Welsh bac, it says, 'What is propaganda? Propaganda is information that is not impartial and used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively, perhaps by omission, or using loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information presented.'