Jenny Rathbone made an important series of points in relation to the impact on the non-maintained sector. The report talks about the financial fragility of a number of settings. She will know that we committed £8 million between March 2020 and 2021 through the Recruit, Recover and Raise Standards programme, and we're working closely with stakeholders, including with Estyn, to understand where support could be best directed in future, including for speech and language services, which she highlighted in her question. In this coming financial year, we're increasing funding to local authorities so that they can better support settings delivering early education to reflect the important points that she made in her contribution.

As we look to the future, Llywydd, I'd like to touch briefly on the role of Estyn itself. The annual report we've discussed today covered an academic year when core inspections were almost completely suspended because of the pandemic. Instead, Estyn inspectors engaged with schools and education and training providers to discuss a range of issues, including the impact of the pandemic, and, importantly, to offer support. As Jayne Bryant said in her contribution, Estyn continue to maintain close contact with schools and settings in follow-up. Formal monitoring of schools requiring special measures or significant improvement resumed in the 2021 summer term, and I'm pleased to say that, to date, a good proportion of these schools have made sufficient progress and been removed from the category.

Our school leaders and the wider educational workforce have faced and continue to face significant pressures. That's why it was important that I agreed with the previous chief inspector last summer to continue the suspension of Estyn's core inspection programme for a further term, alongside the number of other measures I announced to make space for schools. Estyn subsequently started piloting new inspection arrangements with volunteer schools and pupil referral units in the spring term this year, and during the summer term, they're extending their piloting with a larger sample of schools, which they will select themselves, to test out the new arrangements in a wider variety of settings. They will continue with a return to inspections across other sectors, including for our post-16 settings.

From September, Estyn plan to resume a normal inspection programme across all sectors. The objective and independent information provided by inspections will provide us with vital evidence on how schools are implementing curriculum and ALN reforms, to which a number of speakers have made reference, as well as with wider intelligence about the education system. That's why we've increased funding allocations to Estyn to enable the inspectorate to complete the inspection of all schools in the current cycle by July 2024, in spite of the pause in inspections during the pandemic.

Finally, you will all know that since the publication of the annual report, a new chief inspector has been appointed, and I look forward to continuing to work with Owen Evans over the coming months and to listen to his views on how inspection and Estyn's wider activities can help support our education system to achieve high standards and aspirations for all.