Well, I assume Llywydd will give me some extra time now in my contribution because I'm sick to death of standing in this Chamber week after week hearing the Tories call for more spending on all our public services when you have presided over 10 years of austerity. We will take no lessons from the Conservatives on spending.

Secondly, Welsh Government budget decisions, which I'm now going to come on to, including the allocation to local authorities and the funding directed to delivering national education priorities. Thirdly, local authorities' decision in their local priorities, which includes education school spending and the local schools funding formula, and, of course, finally, priorities set by local school leadership themselves for the individual needs within the schools.

So, as we know, the way our education system works in Wales is through national policy and some national grants like the pupil deprivation grant—which, again, Suzy was talking about earlier on, a policy that helps to overcome disadvantage—the regional consortia, which help to challenge and raise standards, and also shared services, which help to make it more cost-effective for local authorities and schools, and the local authority priorities, which include the funding formula for school funding. And this is all very nicely captured, actually, in the diagram that was on page 22 of the report, and I commend it to you as part of the understanding of this inquiry. It neatly shows us how money flows around the system. But those facts lead me to my next point, which is that the funding allocated by Welsh Government and local authorities needs to support the whole of that education schools system, and, in times of financial restraints, the reality is that, in order to increase funding in any particular part of the system, then decisions are required on who gets more, and, therefore, who gets less, and that's a key challenge for the whole system to respond to the needs in our communities.

So, it is right that recommendation 2 of the report stresses the need for preventative spending and the link with recommendation 4 about the importance of a needs-based approach to the allocation of funding. For me, that includes a high priority on the need to focus on tackling the impact of poverty on the prospects and the achievements of our children. But I also want to echo what Lynne Neagle said at the outset of this debate about the scale of the education agenda that we're currently pursuing in Wales, and I think it's worth reminding us that we're talking about the new curriculum, we're talking about the transition through to the ALN, we're talking about encouraging a whole-school approach to mental health, along with the support and development of teaching staff. So, education and school funding, within a framework of preventative spending, is a major funding issue for Welsh Government in the decade ahead, and, as a result, I hope that we are seeing some turn around after years of Tory cuts—we'll wait and see if the money comes our way—so that we can start to improve the funding situation for local authorities and for schools, and that the Welsh Government and local authorities are able to deliver an improved understanding on the funding needs of our schools, but we must also recognise that, even if councils get more money, how much of that money reaches schools does still depend on the priority of each school—sorry, each local authority.

Finally, Llywydd, we should also remember that the results achieved in our schools are not solely linked to the amount of money that they receive. There's a lot of evidence to show that, even in schools spending the highest sums of money, the attainment levels are often lower than in some schools spending far less, and I'm not sure we've got to the bottom of why that is.

And, while I agree with recommendation 21, which reminds us that the Welsh Government need to ensure the money is finding its way to the front line for the purposes intended, the debate about school funding should not distract us from the discussions around raising performance, in which school funding is only one factor.