Thank you very much. The main reason we decided to table our amendment to the motion today was to highlight the fact that the issue of teacher retention is more complex and multifaceted than issues around staffing and personnel alone; it is broader than the scope of this motion. Of course, personnel and staffing issues are important, and we shouldn't forget that recruitment campaigns are also crucially important, but we need to invest more in schools in order to employ more staff, if we really want the Welsh language to prosper, if we want the new curriculum to succeed, if we want to reform additional learning needs education in full, then the reality of the losses in education that we've suffered during the pandemic are also a cause of great concern. And we truly need to ensure that there's a plan in place to meet the huge challenge of restoring education.

However, when it comes to a matter of giving the workforce a boost, we must bear in mind that there are myriad reasons as to why people leave the profession, and at the moment, one in three teachers are quitting the classroom within the first five years in post. Evidence from broad research and indeed, common sense tells us that the main factors related to retention problems in education are teacher welfare as well as workload issues, accountability issues, inspection processes, bureaucracy, funding and budgeting and a lack of professional development opportunities—a whole range of issues. And in order to secure the strong education workforce that we need in Wales, then the Government must respond to all of the factors that relate to teacher retention, and that's why we believe that we need a multifaceted approach to tackle recruitment and retention issues, a plan that focuses on appreciating the profession and creating better working conditions and opportunities for our educators.

It strikes me too that the Conservative motion doesn't make any reference to the Welsh language. There is a shortage of over 300 Welsh-medium primary teachers and 500 in the secondary sector, and that is a cause of great concern. The Welsh Government has introduced a number of interventions in order to try and attract more to train as Welsh-medium teachers, but in reality, we need more strategic and far-reaching changes if we are to change these patterns.

Funding issues and budgeting issues place a huge burden on teachers and school leaders, having an impact on their well-being and therefore on retention levels, and one solution would be to provide longer term budgets for education so that schools and FE can plan and better use their resources, and the Welsh Government needs to ensure that that funding reaches the front line in an effective and timely manner.

Surveys suggest that most teachers don't feel that their voices are being heard by the Welsh Government, but in order to create the profession that we want to see developed if we are to create an attractive profession to promote recruitment and retention, then the Government must listen to teachers and school leaders. And the workforce also needs to see that the Welsh Government is pressing for very real change in policy in practice areas that have an impact on their well-being, as well as issues related to workload, accountability, inspection—all of these myriad issues that do place huge pressures on our teaching workforce.

In the long term, we must resolve this problem, or we are depriving our children and future generations of an education that truly respects the workforce, and we will be losing more and more teachers and losing one of the most valuable resources that we have as a nation, namely, the teaching workforce.