Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I move those amendments in the name of Plaid Cymru. Of course, we have seen a number of changes and reforms over the years, particularly maybe over the last two Assembly terms. We've seen the review of the qualifications system, we've seen an ongoing review now of the national curriculum, we've seen changes to additional learning needs as well, of course. And the Welsh Government and Qualifications Wales regularly remind us, as we've heard, that, due to the scale and the complexity of those recent changes, we should take care when drawing any conclusions from comparing results from one year to the other. Well, you know what? I've been here for probably seven years now, and I don't think I've had a single year where I haven't been told that it's difficult to make those comparisons, and that underlines to me, I think, the way that the Welsh Government has constantly been reforming, changing, moving the goalposts—largely, I'm sure, rightly so. But it just leaves me wondering whether we'll ever get to a level of consistency within the system where we can in future, maybe, make those kinds of comparisons.

And spare a thought for the teachers who are grappling with those changes at the coalface on a daily basis, and, of course, the biggest change is yet to come in that curriculum reform and the consequential changes in qualifications and assessment systems.

There is an irony, I think, in that no doubt the Cabinet Secretary will tell us in a minute that we mustn't make those year-on-year comparisons, but, in the Government's own amendment, of course, it welcomes the increase in A* to C GCSE maths and maths numeracy results. Well, I'm not sure that we can have it both ways. Maybe we can, but, you know, what does that do in terms of confusing people out there as to whether we can or cannot make meaningful comparisons?

I have to say that, given the huge reduction in early entry to GCSE this year compared to last—I think around 16 per cent of all qualifications last year were early entry and it's now barely 4 per cent this year—I was hoping that maybe that would have an impression on the overall A* to C pass rate, but it is disappointing that we've seen the headline statistic again down this year. And, of course, the gap between attainment in Wales, England and Northern Ireland—whilst there may be caveats and health warnings, it is a comparison that people will make. So, maybe the question we should be asking is: if comparing is difficult, what is the Welsh Government doing to educate pupils, parents and the wider public about how we do that?

So, whilst making annual comparisons is admittedly increasingly difficult, I think there is one thing that is plain to see, and that is, of course, that it is unrealistic and unfair of the Welsh Government and anyone else to expect year-on-year improvement in A-level and GCSE performance when, of course, we see year-on-year school budgets reducing and shrinking and the resources available diminishing. Unless, of course, schools and local authorities are provided with fairer funding, then I don't think we can realistically expect our pupils to be constantly improving and achieving their full potential.

Local authorities, teachers, teaching unions—they tell us that schools have now reached crisis point. Following real-terms cuts to per pupil funding of £300 since 2009, the education unions are saying that we're seeing increases in class sizes, it's leading to an overreliance on teaching assistants, who aren't, of course, properly paid, it's leading to a detrimental impact on the curriculum, and pupils' education will inevitably suffer as a result. So, it's a miracle, actually, that they are performing as well as they are performing under those circumstances. And that does have an effect or an impact on teachers' and pupils' morale as well, and there's a vicious circle, isn't there, really? With diminishing levels of staffing in many of our schools, the workload on the remaining teachers is much higher and the pressures and the stress are bound to show. It's certainly reflected in the way that fewer people are being attracted into the profession now, with numbers of new trainee teachers missing targets, secondary school teachers targets missed by over a third in 2016-17, the target missed as well for primary school trainees, and a third of teachers who responded to the Education Workforce Council's national education workforce survey said that they intended to leave the profession in the next three years. And, of course National Education Union Cymru figures as well have shown that over 15,000 working days a year are now lost by teachers due to stress-related illnesses.

Now, Plaid Cymru's fully costed manifesto from 2016 outlined how we would introduce a number of initiatives, including an annual premium payment to teachers and a payment as well to teaching assistants—we mustn't forget them. We talked about a greater focus on allowing time for training, a greater emphasis on continuing professional development, more time to prepare and to teach and to mark, but, of course, all of this costs money, and we recognise that. But creating a world-class education system will cost money, and we mustn't fool ourselves that we can do it any other way. So, the Welsh Government must step up to that mark, and it's only then that we can fairly and reasonable expect our teachers and our pupils to achieve the improved standards and results that we all want to see.