It is the legacy of the First Minister that's in the spotlight today. It's only this week we've produced our own policy on how to improve housing and provision for that in Wales, so you can't say that we're without ideas. It's just today is not the day for them. You'll be getting plenty from us in the next couple of years—don't you worry about that. 

Predictably, of course, had the First Minister himself been here today, he would have tried to respond to the deficiencies in his Government just by blaming the UK Government, but education has been thoroughly devolved for the last 20 years, and actually—and I think I'm probably more likely to get it from you, leader of the house—I'd rather hear an analysis of what you think has gone right or wrong on his watch when it comes to education. 

I can quickly talk about money, because there is a connection there with the UK Government, and, of course, the Welsh Government's well-oiled wheedle of not having enough money—we say year-on-year funding increase; you say real-term cuts. But both positions prompt the question of how Welsh Government has chosen to spend what it does get on giving children the first chance of a better future. In his leadership campaign, the First Minister recognised that education in Wales was getting a poor deal from his own Government at that point, and it wasn't the UK. His pitch included a commitment, and I quote, 'to spend 1 per cent above the block grant every year until we reach a situation where we have parity of funding per head of pupils in England.' 

Well, we still don't have that parity of funding per pupil nine years later, and England's own figures have dropped in the meantime. What we have had in that time, certainly in the time I've been here, is a 7.9 per cent real-terms decrease—and it's you that like the real-term figures—in the gross budgeted expenditure for education, and a 7.5 per cent real-terms cut in per pupil spend. You get 20 per cent more to spend per person than in England, yet, for years, you have spent less per pupil than England. That is undeniable, and we are now in a place where Labour councils are saying that they are no longer in a position to protect school spending. Welsh Government's had nine years to keep that promise on which the First Minister was elected, first as leader of his party, and then as leader of the nation, and that is a promise that has not been kept. On his own terms, that is a failure.

But education's not just about money, in case anyone was thinking that; it is about a wider culture of competitive standards, the creation of an ambitious and fulfilled workforce, including educators themselves, and, most of all, resilient, healthy, creative children and adults who are interested in this world and want to contribute to it to the best of their abilities. And while Welsh Government needs money, of course, the success of education is every bit as much about the philosophy and the policy direction. The effects of years of Labour policy—well, we've rehearsed them many times; Paul Davies mentioned some of them. For the fourth time in a decade we're behind the other UK nations on PISA results—the most recent being even worse than 2009—specifically in reading, maths and science, and, this year's A to C grade at GCSE, which were down again on last year, itself the lowest year of achievement since 2006, it was maths, English, biology, chemistry and physics, as well as Welsh language, mirroring those PISA results, despite being measured in a completely different way. Forty-five education institutions across Wales are in special measures or in need of significant improvement; one there for four years. As Estyn says in yesterday's report: 

'Despite various initiatives, including banding and categorisation...not enough is done to support them',  meaning these schools, or to develop sustainable strategies for schools. And with so much effort and money going into these various initiatives, especially on standards—we're talking about regional consortia, Schools Challenge Cymru; Jenny Rathbone was talking about that earlier—why are more than half our secondary schools still stuck with inspection reports that aren't good or excellent? Now, this is a year-on-year failure in the time that I've been in this place.

Thousands of children and young people's parents and grandparents went through an education system envied and respected not just in the UK but around the world, and those children are now denied the same privilege, because it's being run by a Labour administration with its eye off the ball, a belated mea culpa from the First Minister and a bureaucratic approach to raising standards. It will not be enough to say that more young people have GCSEs, or their equivalent, than in the 1990s. Not only is that true of the rest of the UK, but the rest of the UK have done a stellar job in comparison. I have come to this portfolio to face a tsunami of reviews—a tsunami of reviews—on which, by the way, if you want more money—I don't know where the education Cabinet Secretary is at the moment—get your act together on the Reid review. There is plenty of money waiting for us there, if you follow those recommendations.

I think this ruck of reviews is a sign that Welsh Government accepts that it's got it very wrong, for a very long time, and that it needs to start from scratch. That's certainly what it feels like. So, for our young people and their future, though, a change of party leader doesn't meet a change in substance. All the reviews in the world won't change a thing with the same dead hand on the tiller of the sinking ship that is Labour Wales.