Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The Minister said in her statement:

'for the first time ever, we are performing at the OECD average in all three domains: in reading, in science, and in mathematics.'

But will she acknowledge that there's less cause for self-congratulation here, perhaps, than meets the eye? Because her own graphs show that the OECD average is itself falling; it's getting lower and lower year by year. So, if we stand still, eventually the OECD will fall below us and that wouldn't be a cause for self-congratulation. Having said that, I do acknowledge, obviously, that the Minister has achieved something worth while—she has arrested a long period of decline in standards in Welsh schools. With Wales languishing below the other countries of the UK after 20 years of the existence of this Assembly, I don't think that any education Minister could rightly expect to be pleased, even with the results we've been talking about today. We certainly can't celebrate still being below all other countries in the UK. We can't celebrate still being below the OECD average. Indeed, in the case of Northern Ireland, of course, they haven't had an Assembly in operation for several years, and they haven't got a democratically controlled Government, but they have beaten us in these results.

I wonder if the Minister will acknowledge that we should look at the most recent results through the eye of history. And we look back to 2006, what we have seen—although there has been, and I acknowledge it and welcome it, an improvement since she has been the Minister, we have actually not gone forward very much at all. In the case of reading, we've gone from a score of 481 to 483. That's broadly static. In the case of maths, we've gone from 484 to 487, and in the case of science, disastrously, we've gone from 505 back to 488. We have to do a lot better than this before we can pat ourselves on the back.

I don't think it is really much of an ambition in life to seek to be at the average. What we should be seeking to do is to be a lot better than average. If we look at the tables of all the countries that have been participating in the PISA results, and we look at Singapore—almost at the top, because it's actually No. 2—Singapore's scores in reading is 549, compared with ours at 483, 569 in maths, compared with ours at 487, and 551 in science, compared with ours at 488. Of course, not everybody can be the best, that's the whole point of averaging, but I still think that our ambition should be greater than that.

I know that the Minister doesn't like to be congratulated or complimented by me—she doesn't have a good reason to be so—but I do applaud her for the energy, commitment and passion that she has brought to the conduct of her office, and I do welcome the change that she has brought to the education system in Wales. If this arrest of decline is to be sustained, and I believe that she has put in place some of the building blocks for future success, then she will go down in the history of Welsh devolution as the best Minister for Education that we have had, albeit that may not be too great a compliment.