Cabinet Secretary, I hope you'll forgive me for having the temerity to start with some good news, because actually there is some good news out there. I know we bumped into each other in the canteen during the summer recess, proving that AMs continue to work through what the outside world continues to call the holiday period, and I did explain that my niece Nia was about to get her A-level grades and she was sitting STEM subjects. We were talking about the need to encourage pupils to take on the challenge of STEM subjects and I'm delighted to say that she did get her grades and got the place in her first preference, which is the University of East Anglia, to read environmental engineering. So, she's off to Norwich on Saturday, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I'm sure that we all want to send our best wishes to all our young people who are embarking on this most exciting stage of life. They demonstrate the potential of our young people, and, of course, it's always a tragedy when we don't reach that level where the maximum number of our young people can have those sorts of life experiences and start to meet their real potential.

So, it's really important that we challenge ourselves in terms of the standards we are delivering in education, and I think it's appropriate for us to look at these exam results, to look at PISA, and to urge the Government to have a strategy that really does turn us around so that we can again be the place to be in the United Kingdom, or perhaps Europe and the world. Why not? That's the sort of ambition we should have, so that future generations will talk about our education system the way that many did talk about the number of teachers and professionals that were produced by the Welsh education system generations ago. And that's how we want the rest of the UK, I think, to talk about us.

Can I say that my own particular commitment to the education sector is in the area of special needs? I'm the chair of the governing body at Meadowbank School, which is a primary school for children with speech and language learning difficulties and, now, wider disabilities as well. And, in relation to this afternoon's debate, I'm the chair of governors at Headlands School, which is a school for young people with significant emotional and behavioural difficulties. It's technically an independent school run by the charity Action for Children, but in effect it provides places to the state sector. I think it's a real glowing example of what high expectations deliver, because there there is a culture of achievement and high expectations. Our motto is 'Expectations are everything', and we encourage young people to sit GCSEs and A-levels, and I'm delighted to say that some will now be leaving us and going on to further education or higher education. That's the sort of outcome that we want to see, because we should see these young people as full of potential, and not see their particular difficulty as defining them.

I think other groups are key here when it comes to expectation: those that are in receipt of free school meals—we need to do much better for that group of young people—and then, also, care-experienced children. I'm not going to concentrate on that, this afternoon, but clearly they are in a similar category. Again, I think our expectations must be higher when we set our policies and what we expect of schools: what support mechanisms they should have in place. How are they meeting the obvious deficiencies that some in those areas will experience, like where can they go and do homework, have access to modern equipment? And even our young people that can't rely on their parents or guardians to help with their maths homework or something. This is a common experience, and we should be able, in our system, to ensure that those students get the support that others do when they've got access through friends and relatives to that type of expertise.

So, I think it's really, really important, and I would like to see things like the Estyn inspection process tweaked so that we really do emphasise subsets when it comes to performance in exams, such as special needs—that are catered for in the main stream; that's an increasing direction for public policy and one I'm broadly in favour of—and, as I said, free school meals and care-experienced children. Above all, I never want to see in Wales a culture develop where certain students are discouraged from sitting GCSEs or A-levels because it is seen as a way of disguising the actual overall performance in that school community.