I thank the Member for those questions. On the point about the response of the teaching workforce to the curriculum, I think it's one that she would recognise is one of excitement and commitment to the principles of the new curriculum, and the desire, together with all of us in this Chamber, to see it succeed, and that's been what's motivated the phenomenal hard work over many years of the profession to be ready for this exciting next stage in the journey from September, which I know that she will also welcome.

I share her concern in relation to the attendance challenge, which she described very clearly in her question. She's absolutely right to say that in order to benefit fully from the advantages of the new curriculum pupils need to be in school, which is why we're prioritising our response to ensuring that pupils are in school. She'll know the investment we've made in relation to family engagement officers, and we had a very fruitful discussion in the committee the other day in relation to some of the other interventions that we're putting in place. She will also know, I think, that even for those parents and carers who have made the choice to home-educate their children, we're looking at ways to make available to them access to the Hwb network, so that they have a suite of resources, many of which obviously will have been tailored to the approaches of the new curriculum. So, we will always try and find ways of minimising those differences, but there is a practical limitation to that, which is why I'm so keen to make sure that, perhaps, in particular those who have made a recent decision to stay at home, as a consequence of the COVID pandemic, that we encourage those back into school to take full advantage of this fantastic new chapter in our education story here in Wales.

She asked an important question about how we use the evolution of the curriculum as a means of learning ourselves, and I can give her the assurance that the report that I published last week about curriculum preparedness will be one of many dozens of reports, I hope—one each year—which will give the Senedd a formal opportunity to assess where we are, but there will be, I'm sure, many, many opportunities between those reports for me to account for progress, which I'm sure will be rapid and sustained.

The national network, I think, in terms of the evolution of the curriculum, is a very important dimension of the landscape going forward. That's already, as I indicated in my statement, had a really tangible impact on how we've worked on and developed some of the resources available to teachers and some of the approaches, and I think that will only intensify. We have a session coming up in the coming few months on oracy and reading, and there will be a series of network discussions that will be a feature of the system going forward. It does involve practitioners giving up their time; we provide funding to schools to enable that to happen. But, it's really important that I'm able to continuously demonstrate the value of giving up time, and I will be looking for ways to do that because it's crucial to the success of that part of the system itself. 

She made a number of points about funding. I'll just remind her that this year's local government settlement, which is how schools are generally funded, is the most extensive settlement in many, many years. Obviously, the economic climate is changing and has changed since then, but that is the starting point for our school funding discussion. I think she was making a point about consistency, fundamentally, and, I think, referring to the Luke Sibieta work—I took that implication from her question.

She will also know, I think, that from the perspective of curriculum preparedness, we've obviously provided direct funding into the system from the Welsh Government, and we are providing £21 million to schools this year for curriculum preparation, in addition, of course, to the many millions we spend on professional learning, from which teachers have an opportunity to access that very directly. So, I hope she finds those answers reassuring, and I welcome her commitment and support to the curriculum.