Thank you to the committee for this report. As a new member of the committee, I've found this a really interesting read and, with that very necessary focus on school budgets now, I think we all welcome this scrutiny of the effectiveness of particular activities and the stability of the income streams that underpin them.

I'm interested, too, in whether school leaders make spending decisions on the basis of what they think will work best and hope that they can then resource those decisions sufficiently a bit further down the line, or whether it's finance first, resulting, maybe, in an offer to children that is less than optimum. Because, arguably, in both those cases, neither decision is as effective as it needs to be. In the first, the quality is there, but may be unaffordable and therefore not achievable, and in the second, the cheaper option may not quite hit the mark for the more challenging objectives for particular children. Obviously, I realise this is an oversimplification of the dilemmas that school leaders face—it's not all about money—but as recommendation 1 in this report does make clear, value for money and opportunity cost are considerations for this Assembly, considering the financial constraints we're under.

We recognise what you hope to achieve through the PDG, Cabinet Secretary, and would expect, of course, a robust defence of it when it appears to be falling short, but what we will be looking for in particular is a credible explanation of why it works when it does and an honest appraisal of why it doesn't when it doesn't. Because, if it is literally just about money, we'll support you in your arguments to the finance Secretary to get more money. However, if it's about weaknesses within school leadership or consortia or local authorities, or even within Welsh Government or Estyn, you need to be frank with us. So, while I completely accept the value of tracking systems and data gathering, which I see you mentioned in your response to recommendation 1, I'm also interested in what you might call—'performance management' is not quite right, but how you gather meaningful information about that, on which you can then act.

As you know, Welsh Conservative believe in more direct funding of schools and trusting teachers and other staff with decisions, but with that comes a greater responsibility for transparency and governance. Because we can hold Welsh Government to account until the cows come home, but, as we see time after time, that is not the same as Welsh Government accepting accountability and acting when this Assembly calls it out. So, it's pleasing, Cabinet Secretary, that you've accepted so many recommendations in the report, which speak to concerns about mission slip, really—not entirely across the board, but in some instances.

And the point about loss of focus on more able and talented children from the PDG target groups is an observation that matters particularly to me, I must admit. Just to be clear, I'm not going to be running any grammar school arguments in the course of this debate, so please don't be distracted by that, but this question about what has happened to working class, non-affluent Wales's status as an acme of educational achievement still hovers over us. And while we can talk about our greater understanding of the effects of poverty and other adverse childhood experiences, it's not as if they didn't exist before, and yet our education system doesn't seem to capture and raise up more of those poor but really able young people to reach the opportunities to an extent that they were able to do previously. So, we will expect to see that acceptance of recommendations, including recommendation 3, turned into action and attainment improvement, and we'll also be expecting assessment of the attributable effect of your PDG strategic advisers. 

Finally, your approach to stopping some of the schools gaming the system—this move from BTECs to GCSEs for the cohorts of pupils that we're talking about in this debate, and the apparent effect on grades and the nature of vocational qualifications. It's been raised previously, and I'm sure we'll hear a bit more again today, that entering the children that we're talking about for GCSE equivalents rather than GCSEs made the narrowing of that attainment gap look a bit more impressive than it's actually been. So, I admire you for not accepting that, but I'm not sure what happens next for the young people who are on the wrong side of that attainment gap, and what you now need to do with the PDG—because it's funding we're talking about—as well as other strategies.

What it has exposed, though—or confirmed prejudices, if you like, Diprwy Llywydd—is that pre-16 vocational qualifications have been treated as lightweight qualifications, and, having seen copies of the relevant science papers in my own household, I can see why. Vocational courses and exams surely should be about responding to learners' different aptitudes and learning styles, and they should still be about achieving excellence, but in a different way with different ways of achieving high levels of practical applicability. We are never going to get anywhere near parity of esteem if the establishment treats vocational exams as the 'That'll do' option, especially for those who are in the greatest need of social mobility.