But do our schools teach pupils very well to pass exams—or at least sufficiently—on the current results? One change we are having, which I should welcome, which the education Secretary put out this morning, is we are seeing a 2.75 per cent increase in teachers' pay and 5 per cent for the newly qualified, and, I think, £12.8 million in the current year to support that. However, would the First Minister agree that this may be too little, too late to address the deep crisis we see in teacher recruitment currently?

Will he also consider whether lower standards of education in Wales compared to England, at least on the results that we are able to compare and the Programme for International Student Assessment ratings, reflect more than just relative spending priorities? May they not also reflect progressive policy and a lack of rigorous comparison of achievement among pupils, schools and UK nations? Estyn reports have dropped their key stage 2 comparisons among schools; Welsh Government has got rid of their target for five good GCSEs, including Maths and English or Welsh; and we've seen our GCSE A to G grades diverging from the 1 to 9 they now have in England. Is the final stage in ending accountability for this Government's failure in education simply to abolish GCSEs?