Can I thank you, Presiding Officer? And I'll move the motion, as on the papers today.

Now, it's interesting, isn't it, once again, to see from the Welsh Government amendment, how a party that's been in power for 20 years treats criticism made by the official opposition in this Assembly? The cybermen of Welsh politics continue to delete the truth if it gets in the way of what they want the people of Wales to know about their Government's record. So, I hope, in the course of this debate, that this Assembly will reject groupthink Wales and acknowledge what one-party politics did to our education system since 2006—the date we began to participate in the PISA results. Because whatever changes there have been under this education Minister, from a different party, the buck stops with successive Labour First Ministers.

Why has the Government deleted our entire motion? Why do you dismiss what our constituents have the right to know and ignore the questions we've been elected to ask? I would be prepared to recognise improvements on the 2015 figures, but the Government is entirely silent on the fact that these 2015 figures are amongst the direst we ever had. This debate has a much longer line of sight than that. 

An improvement in science, you say, not a significant improvement, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—three points—but well done, teachers and pupils in getting that. But it is still a 17-point drop since 2006. Do you really expect us to welcome that? A two-point increase in reading and a four-point increase in maths since 2006 are, again, not significant, according to the OECD. Again, I have to say, their observation, not mine, although I think that recovery in maths since that all-time low in 2012 is worth a shout out to teachers. I think they did brilliantly on that. 

My personal observation is that you hope that these modest improvements this year disguise declines in the knowledge and skills identified in the PISA tests in the last 12 years—years when we've been governed by the Labour Party. And if our science scores weren't enough to leave that champagne bottle, or take it off the shelf, that fact that Wales's reading and maths scores are just back to where they started 12 years ago, again, is no reason to be popping corks. We should be soaring ahead in this last decade, not still behind the other UK nations. That's 12 years of our children and young people not just falling behind their peers in Scotland, Northern Ireland and England, but behind those Welsh children and young people who went before them. That's what we're asking the Government to apologise for. Your celebration of a recovery to a status quo, when that status quo was itself a cause for concern, is the perfect expression of mediocrity knowing nothing higher than itself, and so, we reject your amendment.

And I'm sorry to have to do it. I would like to welcome the reduction in the gap between our most disadvantaged learners and their peers and the improved results for higher achievers, because that suggests that some of those higher achievers come from disadvantaged backgrounds—children who, generally, are still over-represented in the lower performing cohorts. I think our plans for a looked-after children pupil premium would contribute to narrowing that gap as well as raising overall attainment. 

Even so, the pupil development grant is a significant and established lever in improving outcomes for our most disadvantaged pupils. Yet, our most disadvantaged children are still attaining lower scores in reading, which was this year's deep dive examination, than similar children in the other UK nations. And that gap widens until, for our least-deprived pupils, their reading score is 40 points behind their peers in England and 20 points behind the OECD average. There is another attainment gap here—a whopping one, Minister—and it cannot be ignored.

And before anyone wants to talk about them, OECD averages, let's remember that, overall, they themselves have not particularly improved this year. And they're not even an average of participating countries. They've never included the highest scorers in these tests such as the Chinese provinces and Singapore. As with funding per pupil, you can't claim improvement just because those around you are getting worse.

Now, I realise that some of you will want to paint this as criticisms of children, teachers and school leaders, but it is absolutely not. That there is improvement at all is, indeed, testament to pupils and teachers. These are the people who have the daily experience of school life and who have to deal with policy change, changing pedagogic, academic and well-being priorities, changes in parenting styles, lower per-pupil funding over many years, increasingly difficult funding settlements from councils, a drop in teacher numbers, and low resources. Even though 79 per cent of them had been on recent professional development courses, that teachers are managing to have any grasp, really, in this change of focus from knowledge acquisition to knowledge application, against this background is the one thing I think we can congratulate. It's a change of focus that all of us agree with in principle. We agree with part (a) of Plaid’s amendment, but we both share concerns about how this will work in practice, and until we see the detailed proposals for the new curriculum in January, our support has to remain one in principle. 

I agree with you, Minister. Something really does have to change. As Welsh Conservatives, we believe that teachers should be free to teach, unencumbered other than by a robust, credible and relevant framework of excellent governance and accountability. We want this to work, but, bearing in mind Scotland’s declining scores in science and maths in the Donaldson era, we also need to be wary. And we need to be wary as the GCSE results, further outcomes of reform designed to align better with PISA after all, were lower in that A* to C range, notwithstanding the growth in the A* scores. That seems reflected in the PISA findings too. What those PISA results also show is that better performance from our top achievers, which brings us closer to that OECD average, still doesn't get us quite over the line. Performance is no better than in 2006, and, of course, worse in science by those 17 points.

You may also remember me raising concerns that those who will find themselves in the next cohort of pupils taking PISA tests are already showing lower key stage 2 and key stage 3 attainment than at any time since 2007, so only a year after 2006. Schools will no longer be obliged to set targets for English or Welsh and maths. If these pupils are doing less well at this stage in their school journey than those who went on to do disappointingly in PISA tests in the last 12 years, this should be raising alarm bells now if these nascent signs of improvement are to come to anything.

And so to come to point 3 of our motion. Plaid likes to amend out any positive references to the UK Government, so we won't support an unnecessary amendment, but we are coming from pretty much the same place here. Minister, you will have seen the Children, Young People and Education Committee report on school funding. Securing more money in the budget for education is not the same as securing more money for schools. Both our motion and the Plaid amendment talk about money for schools. The PISA report talks about teachers' complaints of lack of resources. I think this has now come to a head, and you will need to tell us how, when you are not the Minister for local government, you will ensure that any additional money for schools in next month's budget actually gets to those schools.

I will understand you investing in early years—it's a Welsh Government priority and it's where essential groundwork, including investment in Welsh language acquisition, will need to take place. It's why, in part, Estonia is doing well, we understand. But there is £195 million coming into the Welsh block from a UK education commitment and £35 million for additional learning needs. Our schools need that swiftly and directly, and we will be looking at the January budget to see how you intend to get it to them. Otherwise, attracting new teachers into the profession will falter further. You'll remember we discussed those Education Workforce Council targets and their disconnect with the number of teachers qualifying in Wales this year. No-one wants to work in an institution with insufficient investment and question marks about where money they could have had is actually going. I have to say the one PISA finding I find quite difficult to understand was that schools in Wales have enough teachers, when we hear, in committee and in this Chamber, about teacher absence and dependence on ill-regulated supply agencies.

But there's a lot to be gleaned from this PISA report, and I hope that others here will pick up today, perhaps, on the detail behind those reading scores; a potentially persistent problem with teachers' evaluation of disciplinary issues; and the role of the digital screen in learning and well-being—the disappointing findings, actually, on well-being compared, perhaps, to what we heard from Estyn only a few months ago.

The next PISA results will be for scrutiny by the next Welsh Parliament. That target of 500 across the board seems as distant today as it would have looked in 2006. Yet, we need to reach it; we need to deliver on all those years we've gone on in this Chamber here about children fulfilling their potential, for themselves, for community cohesion, for improved economic prosperity. Because of that, average is never going to be good enough for our education.