Can I thank Siân Gwenllian for her questions? She'll have to forgive me, I don't recall her discussing an August return with me in our weekly meetings, but she is right to suggest that we had explored the possibility of ending the summer term early and starting the new academic year in August. There were many attractions to that particular scheme. Firstly, making the most of the summer months, whereas I said earlier, we know that the sunlight and the better weather and the ability to have children outside and to better ventilate school buildings is easier to do during the summer months, and it would have allowed even more time for the TTP regime to bed in.

This was discussed with all our union colleagues—headteacher unions, teacher unions and support staff unions. We would have broken up that autumn term into a set number of periods to create natural breaks. But actually, every single union rejected that opportunity. And given the fact that this, of course, would be a profound change to the terms and conditions of our teaching staff, we can only move forward with such a profound change if that is done with the consent of our professionals, and their consent was not there. So, it was a good offer, but I believe what we've come forward with today shares many of the similar opportunities: it allows for the bedding in of testing and tracing for an entire month; it allows us to make the most of learning opportunities in the summer; it provides us with a natural break to reflect on our practice during the six-week summer holidays; and allows us to put in a little extra break—a fire break—in the autumn term when, potentially, things could be becoming difficult once again. And that's how we have decided to proceed.

I think it's important in recognising that it's very difficult to identify which children's education is more important than other people's education. For older children, it's not simply a question of identifying exam groups—different schools have different patterns of exams. There are some children who currently find themselves in year 8 who would begin their GCSE courses in the autumn. There are children who will be sitting unit 1 of their GCSE exams. So, there's a whole variety of exam classes—it's not simply the ones that Siân Gwenllian had outlined, and I think it's absolutely right, in terms of year 6, that they have an opportunity to say goodbye to their teachers and to their schools before they move on to high school. But in terms of curriculum, actually, they've come to the end of their curriculum before they move on to the next stage of their education. I received many overtures from teaching professionals that said that year 5 should take priority over year 6.

What we are doing is ensuring that every child has an opportunity to check in with their teachers, to catch up with what has been going on in their lives, how things have been, how things have been at home, how learning has gone for them, what has been difficult, what's been easy, do they have the facilities that they need in terms of the kit and equipment to allow them to learn, and what are the next phases that they need to work on over the summer and in preparation for September.

And when we think that we could have been asking some very young children to go back in September, when they haven't set foot in a classroom for over 23 weeks, that's a big ask of a small child, and also, that classroom is going to look very different to what it would look like the last time they were in it, and the operation of their school is going to look very different from the last time they were in it. This allows us to have a phased return to be able to slowly introduce our children to what education is going to look like, going forward, and that's why we need to take the opportunity of doing so before the end of the summer term.