Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I'm very pleased to have this opportunity to update the Senedd on the OECD's new report, 'Achieving the New Curriculum for Wales', which was published yesterday. Timely advice and challenge from the OECD has been a key element of my and this Government's approach to education reform. Members will know that we have built new and strong international relationships over the last four years. We are providing life-changing opportunities at Yale University, student teachers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology are teaching science in our schools, and we're working with other systems to learn and to provide advice.

The OECD know and understand our system, and they can hold up a mirror to us as the Government, but also to our system as a whole, and they recognise that, unlike four years ago, Wales has a clear vision for its education system and for its learners. They acknowledge the Government's role in embedding co-construction across the system as a principle for curriculum development and education policy making more generally.

They used to say that Wales ignored leadership as a driver of reform and success. That is emphatically no longer the case. And they say that communication has been clear and continuous, with strong leadership from the top. They see that we have met the challenge from previous reports and that we have established coherence to the different policy components and clarity on the vision, establishing a strong basis for education professionals to make the national mission their very own.

The OECD knows that we have built strong foundations for the next step in our journey with the new curriculum. Foundations such as outperforming the other UK nations for our top A-level results, where we were once a long way behind, back in 2016; thousands and thousands more learners from disadvantaged backgrounds now achieving GCSEs in subjects such as science, directly boosting their life chances; and our Programme for International Student Assessment performance has improved in each domain for the first time ever, putting us back in the OECD main stream.