Diolch, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you for your statement, Minister. We welcome a lot of what you say, and hope to see it translate into making a difference. However, what I am concerned about is the timing and content of some of what you've said. 

I'll start with how you've outlined community schools, our twenty-first century schools. I mean, that's been in progress since 2014—nearly a decade now—and it's only now that we're talking about ensuring that they're truly community schools. We all want them to be, but it's clear from the community schools, these twenty-first century schools, as you go around our schools, that that is not what's happening; they're closing when the school closes. So, it is definitely something that we need to look into. So, I'm hoping that the things you've announced today will actually make a difference in this regard, and schools will be used to their full capacity and what they should be used for to make them truly community schools.

Also within your statement—and I completely concur with the statement—the most important influence on a learner's success within the education system is the quality of learning and teaching—absolutely, 100 per cent. What concerns me is that teachers need more support, they need more training, and we need more teachers. We have a lack of teachers coming forward now, apart from the programme that you've put in place, which, unfortunately, is not going to continue.

We had a situation where we had Chwarae Teg's leadership group come in today—young ladies coming in, interested in going forward in politics. They were a wonderful group of ladies, but it was really interesting to ask them about their experiences of how they're seeing things at the moment, how their experiences of lockdown impacted on their learning, on teaching and that sort of thing. And what became very apparent to me was their concern, even though they thought that teachers were doing a wonderful job, which we all know that they are, about the lack of support that they are getting in terms of knowing what the exam content is going to be, what modules they can cut, and then the girls themselves were worried about revision and what they ought to revise. And although we don't like the term 'catch-up', they were talking about the fact that—they were from all over Wales—the quality of education when it was online in lockdown was poor, and they're finding that even if it was okay, they're redoing what they did during lockdown because a lot of people were offline, even though they said that they were online, it was a blank screen and no-one could see if they were there, they might not even have been listening, so they had to repeat the whole thing to ensure that everybody in that class got the learning that they should have had. And what they said to me, also, was that the people who had missed out were those from low-income families, as a rule, and obviously those people with parents who were working, so they couldn't keep an eye on their children and support their children at home during that time. And that massive element of catch-up, even though we don't like to use that word, was real; it was very real. And they found that it was a massive stress to them and that they weren't actually getting the mental health support that they need.

And all these things that you've announced today are fabulous, but we must go to the core of what is going on here, of what is going on in the classroom, whether teachers are having enough support, and whether learners feel supported themselves. And for me, today, I was shocked by the fact that very intelligent girls from all over didn't feel that that support was there. So, I think that that is something that we need to look into.

Also, then, the educational disadvantage and its impact on educational achievement. Our PISA results are the worst; it's an embarrassment to Wales, I would say, on a par with Soviet bloc countries. And then we've got the pandemic, which has exacerbated that massive attainment gap between those that we really need to be helping out.

All this is not painting a very good picture, and although what you've announced today is great, I think there's still so much that we need to be looking into. And also, have people still got the technical support that they need, the connectivity that they need, from low-income families, the ones who were suffering the most during the pandemic? Because a lot of things—as I'm aware from my own son in secondary school—are now online; there's Google Classroom, there's Google Meet for homework and revision. All these sorts of things need to be thought about in the round if we are truly wanting to up our attainment level. So, I'm just wondering if you could comment on all that, Minister.

I think I've got a—. Here we go: in 2019 and last year, traditional exams were set, the attainment gap at top A* GCSE grade stood at 5.3 points between those getting free school meals and those not eligible. The gap then reached 11.5 per cent in 2021. It's not painting a very good picture, Minister.