I just also want to place on record our thanks to all school staff for their continued resilience and hard work, and learners too. Minister, I want to thank you for your statement today, parts of which we welcome. These have been and are incredibly tough times for learners. How we evaluate the hard work being done by our schools is of paramount importance so that we can all evaluate and see how schools are progressing and reacting post pandemic to new directors, to poor PISA results and to pupils' needs. I must disagree with the Minister's action to get rid of the current school categorisation system—the traffic-light system as it's more commonly known—which has been an easy and simple way for parents, for teachers and local government officials to see how a school is performing. The only problem with that system, Minister, was that the narrative behind why a school had been given a specific colour was not always clear or communicated well enough, or, indeed, what constituted a colour was not the same across Wales. There was no consistency—things that easily could have been changed. Not only was the colour coding a very simple way for parents to see how a school was doing, it also aided local authorities to determine where resources were most needed, and for clusters to know where extra support was needed within their own clusters. And heads have said they already collaborate and don't compete, as your statement implies. 

Bringing in a self-evaluation system, aligned with your new proposed system, is fraught with risks, and also, once again, increases the workload on teachers—something that I can't support. Getting rid of the old system begs the question of why the Welsh Government are intent on moving to a new system, which allows worse results to be buried and means fewer parents will be able to clearly see how Government are failing their children and the young people from Wales from basic skills, to results, to supporting our young people with their mental health and well-being. Why can't there be some sort of marriage between the two ideas? Setting plans and priorities, as we've outlined, are good, but why can't we see how schools are doing too? Why can't there be that simple gauge any more? Why get rid of that? Rather than a system change once again, making the system that was there more effective perhaps would've been a better idea, in my opinion.

It concerns me that the outcome of how schools are doing now won't be clear under the new proposed system, and parents won't be able to see very clearly how a school is performing. Not all parents will want to read pages and pages of documents to see how their schools are doing. How are you, Minister, going to ensure that how schools are doing will be simply and clearly communicated to parents? We seem to be focused on the negatives here, obviously, as well, but what about those schools doing well that have seriously improved? What about those schools and them getting the recognition for their hard work? You know, when they got an 'excellent' from an Estyn report, it was celebrated within the school; how's that going to be replaced?

Minister, we've talked about evaluating now, but also, on improving education in Wales, to truly ensure that we improve education and learning in Wales, we must ensure that our learners feel support with regard to their education and their mental health and well-being. With regard to mental health and well-being, the Welsh Government thus far has overpromised and underdelivered. School leaders have been told that they will be given the necessary support and help for their learners, but schools just aren't feeling supported at all, particularly primary schools, from conversations that I've had with school leaders. Our children are feeling overwhelmed with the amount of learning time they've lost and they're not feeling on a par with their peers. And we've already heard today about the negative impact of school transport, or lack of, or other money worries that are all causing a huge rise in pupil absences. Surely, that's what we need to be concentrating on at the moment: getting our children back into schools and making sure that they're feeling supported.

Minister, we need to stop changing systems to try and hide your Government's shortcomings and get back to basics where we're getting our learners back into school and getting the mental health and well-being support to where it's needed. Minister, what immediate action is this Government going to take to get our young people back into school and to ensure that learners feel more supported, not from the September half term, but right now so that our learners feel in the best place to start the new school year in September, with all the mental health and educational support that they need? Thank you.