I wasn't being flippant when I said 2026 was a long way away. What I was actually trying to say—obviously not clearly enough—was that that will be here with us before we know it. And that's why it's been absolutely crucial to me that we have had Qualifications Wales engaged from the very start of the process. Work is already under way on understanding the consequences for qualifications as a result of these curriculum changes. And if the Member would like further details, I'm happy to facilitate a meeting between herself and Qualifications Wales, so she can hear, in more time than I'm able to give here this afternoon, and talk about the nature of that work, remembering, of course, that qualifications is now arm's length from Ministers.

That brings me on to the issue of assessment. The detail and emphasis of our assessment arrangements will need to change, to best support the new curriculum. The central focus of assessment in the future will be to ensure that all children and young people understand how they are performing, and, crucially, what they need to do next to make progress and move on. So there will be greater emphasis on formative assessment, to inform next steps for both teaching and learning. To strengthen the relationship between the curriculum and assessment, and to give a focus on each child's progress, there will no longer be levels. Instead, assessment will be based on the achievement outcomes, which will be published alongside the contents of the AoLEs. And they will expressly set out what achievement looks like in each of those six areas of learning and experience. And what I do propose—and is included in the White Paper—is that headteachers will have a duty to set achievement outcomes to support all children and young people at their school, to progress along the continuum of learning. And to ensure that there will be consistency between schools, we propose that they have to have regard to the achievement outcomes, which, as I said, will be published later on this year.

So, there will be a continued focus on teacher assessment, and assessment for learning, alongside our other assessment regimes, such as the online adaptive testing. With regard to evaluation, which, as I said earlier, is different—and that is how we hold the system to account, both individual schools and the system as a whole—details of that will be published later on.

With regard to the Welsh language, I was very grateful to receive the support of Cymdeithas yr Iaith yesterday, who have welcomed very much what we're doing with regard to the continuum of Welsh language learning. And we will be getting away from this distinction between what is classed as a 'first language', and what is a 'second language'. That is long overdue in our system, and I am very glad that we have got to the position of establishing a continuum. That continuum will also exist, of course, for the English language, and we would expect children to move along either continuum, at a rate and in a way that is commensurate with the nature of the language of tuition in their school. So, understandably, we would expect a child who is in Welsh-medium education, where the language of tuition is Welsh medium—that child would probably progress along the progression steps more quickly. But our intention is to continually review the progression steps so we can add added rigour into the system as the years go on.

I will be absolutely clear, as I was to Suzy Davies: it is already a requirement in the foundation phase that children have to develop an awareness of both of our languages, and language skills learned in one language support the development and knowledge and skills in another language. There is nothing in here that will undermine the issue of immersion. And actually—certainly in the 'cylch-s' I know best, in areas of Wales where we need more people to make a positive choice, to choose cylch, and to chose Welsh medium for their children—those 'cylch-s' work in a bilingual way, especially for children such as my own, who came from a family with no Welsh at all, to be able to settle in, and to be able to enjoy their time there, and to develop their Welsh language skills. And there is nothing in these proposals that would undermine that.

In fact, I would even go as far as to say that it's just not credible to say any proposal in this paper will damage our ambition for a million Welsh speakers, and what I should also say is that you should see my ministerial inbox. I try to stick to my principles on ensuring that the quality of Welsh learning is as good as it could be. But that results in some pretty horrible e-mails into my inbox, and it shows me we still have a long way to go—a long way to go—to win the argument about why having bilingual children is the best possible gift that we can give our children and young people.

And we have to be very careful about some of the language we ourselves use when discussing these issues, because I've been surprised in my inbox on a regular basis that we have parents who write to me who don't believe that their children should be taught Welsh at all—at all—in our system. As we're introducing a system that—. As I said, I want to ensure that all of our children have an equal chance to be bilingual speakers—. Then, we need to move forward carefully, and ensure that we don't scaremonger or feel that the issue of the language is being undermined one way or the other.