What we will have instead, from this summer, is a points-based score system, where every child's achievements—every child, from the highest achievers to those for whom actually getting a D is a massive achievement for them—will be counted. And we will still have headline measures for counting English, maths, as well as science. We're not getting rid of accountability. We're moving to a smarter accountability where every child matters in our system, the performance of every child matters in our system and, crucially, we measure the impact of that child's progress through the education system. So, if you came in expecting a certain grade at year 7, then we can track that child's progress and the impact that that school has had on that particular child.

What we know is—. And, Suzy, I think, in your response to my statement last year, you recognised that the unintended consequences—whether they should have been foreseen by previous Governments or unforeseen—have led to a narrowing of curriculum, and indeed, timetabling that has led to subjects such as history, geography, drama, art, music and French being driven out of the curriculum, as teachers concentrate their timetabling lessons, sometimes for entire half terms, simply on English and maths to the exclusion of everything else I think we want our children to learn and achieve in our schools. 

Now, the purpose of these amending regulations is not to remove quality control from our school accountability system. Schools will continue to be inspected; parents and guardians will continue to receive reports on progress of learners; schools will still be required to set targets for improvement and local authorities will continue to quality assure those targets; and Estyn will also inspect local authorities and regional consortia and judge the arrangements in place in each region, to ensure rigour and consistency. And it is a fallacy to say that parents don’t have access to information. You only have to go onto the ‘My local school’ website here, this afternoon, in the Chamber, and you get a very, very full and rich picture of what is going on in individual schools.

Now, our national mission sets out our vision for an accountability system that is fair, coherent, proportionate, transparent and is based on our shared values for the Welsh education system, and not market values, Mr Reckless. The new evaluation and improvement arrangements will help bring about the cultural change that is ultimately needed to support the realisation of our new curriculum.