I welcome very much the chief inspector's annual report for 2017-18. I'm looking forward to studying the report in more detail, and of course will formally respond in the Plenary debate, which I understand, Presiding Officer, is provisionally scheduled for 19 February of next year.

I'm glad that the Member has acknowledged the progress that has been made in the primary sector, but I would be the first person to say that progress in our secondary sector is not good enough. I say it not just because I'm on these benches; I say it as a parent who has children in the system herself. I want all of our children to attend a good or excellent secondary school here in Wales, and our approach is to support all schools to be good and excellent, rather than the approach that we saw very much in operation yesterday across the border, when £50 million was announced to support just 16 highly selective secondary schools. That's the difference between the approach of this Government and the approach that the Tories would take, picking off certain schools and certain children for support, whereas we want all of our schools to do well.

Now, let me be absolutely clear what we are doing. The inspection report yesterday says that we need to do more to support our teaching profession. That's why we will spend £24 million over the next 18 months on supporting the professional learning of our staff. That is the single biggest investment in Welsh teachers since devolution, and we are determined to make sure that all our practitioners, in every classroom, are as good as they can be.

The Estyn report also rightly pointed to disparities in the quality of leadership in our system. That's why we have established the National Academy for Educational Leadership, and to be fair, Suzy, that is less than a year old, and to say that it has not delivered is simply not fair on those people who are working very, very, very hard to ensure that our leaders, our new and our aspiring head teachers, are as good as they could be.

For me, what is absolutely critical is that by the time a school is put into a category by Estyn, either in special measures or significant improvement, that is too late. Both local authorities and regional consortia should know their schools well enough that when they suspect a school is struggling to meet the needs of their pupils, they are able to intervene earlier, and we should not let it get to the stage of needing an Estyn inspection report to say that that school needs extra help. I am currently considering options of what more we can do to intervene earlier in schools that, potentially, are not meeting the needs of their children, are struggling to cope and are causing concern. At the moment, local authorities have the statutory responsibility for monitoring those schools, and for schools where there are those concerns, I expect local authorities to take prompt action. If they need more help to do so, either from the Welsh Government or from the regional consortia, I will make that help available.