So, I've had less than—let's see, Thursday, Friday—. Well, Wednesday afternoon, I saw the initial results and then got the report on Thursday, so I've only had a few days myself to acquaint myself with it.

But we have had OECD back in Wales earlier on in the autumn term to, again, give us an independent assessment on where we are with our reform journey, and they are looking to report that sometime in the new year. So, again, we've commissioned them, we've asked them to come in to have a look at what we're doing and scrutinise us as a Government; to go out to schools and speak to headteachers; speak to local education authorities; speak to regional school improvement services to ask them about where they think they are; and to speak to other stakeholders, and we'll have that independent report delivered to us, as I said, in the new year. And that is a genuine attempt to keep the pressure on, to have that outside independence looking at what we're doing so that we don't get carried away, or begin to believe our own spin, but to actually have that outside scrutiny to keep us honest with regard to the delivery of our programmes, and then use that advice to amend or adjust things that are going well, or if things are not going so well, to be able to respond accordingly. So, that will come in the new year.

You talked about the issue of trajectory, and I think trajectory is important. What gives me some satisfaction today is that we have been able to sustain, over two cycles now, that improvement in mathematics, and that's what we need to see happening in the other domains as well. Whilst we have gone up in reading, that's from the low base that we achieved last time, and although we've gone up in science, which is different from the rest of the UK, again, that is from a low base. It's the first time ever, actually, that we've ever been able to improve our science score, but that has to be sustainable. We've seen that now over two cycles for maths, which I think can give us a greater level of confidence, and we will have to see that continued in the other two domains as well. 

With regard to equity and excellence, I think it is important to reflect that, in Wales the disadvantage gap was significantly smaller, and pupils in Wales were relatively more able to overcome the disadvantages of their background than the average of OECD countries. So, we're closing that attainment gap, and we're giving our young people the skills that they need and the tools that they need to overcome disadvantage that they may bring with them within the system. What's also important is that pupils in Wales with an immigrant background were not significantly different from non-immigrant pupils with regards to their reading performance which, again, bucks the OECD average. So, with regard to learners who might have a variety of challenges coming into school, whether that be perhaps not from an English or a Welsh-speaking family, or coming from a socially-disadvantaged family, our system helps those children do well.

But does that mean there's a tension between our support for more able and talented students versus our support for our students from a more socioeconomic deprived background? I don't believe there is a tension there. The Government cannot ignore anybody. The education system has to be a system that works for every single pupil to allow them to reach their full potential, whether they are students with profound additional learning needs, like I met in Trinity Fields School & Resource Centre in Caerphilly yesterday, or whether they're the students I met today who are destined for world-leading universities, we have to create an education system that allows each and every single individual to reach their full potential.

I never will make any apology for the investment in the pupil development grant. Those children we know are less likely to do well, and I don't want to live in a country where the size of your parents' pay cheque or the background that you come from designates you and tells you from the very youngest of ages, 'This is your destiny.' We have to buck that. We have to let the innate abilities of each and every child shine through, regardless of where they come from—regardless of where they come from. And I will never apologise for chasing that dream for those children.

With regard to reading, you are right; we are not where we need to be with our reading scores, and that is particularly true for our boys. We will need to reflect on our performance and understand what more we can do to ensure that we make progress in this regard. Reading for girls, their score is significantly higher, but we do—and I'd be the first to admit—have a challenge here, especially for boys, to drive up that reading level. There's been much reporting on the 44 per cent figure of people not reading books. Now, I don't know whether that's a stable door that has closed, but what I do know, it takes us back to early years, the development of reading habits early in the child's educational career, developing a love of reading, is something that we have to engender from an early age. Suddenly turning around to a 15-year-old—and as a mother of a 15-year-old, I know this—and saying, 'You have to pick up that book and you read it' is not going to get us very far. We have to start that again at our very earliest years and develop that love of reading and that habit of reading. And, of course, there's a huge amount of work to be done, then, by parents. Parents can help us hugely, help schools hugely, by reading with their children at home from the earliest age to get children into that habit of picking up a book and discovering the joy of reading. But we also have to embrace new technology. Maybe young people—we're more likely to get them to engage in the world of words if we find them different alternatives, but we have more work to do in this regard, and I'd be the first person to admit that we are below the UK when it comes to our reading scores.