Okay, good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Children, Young People and Education Committee this morning. I've received apologies for absence from Suzy Davies and Hefin David, and we've got no substitutions. Can I ask if Members have any declarations of interest? Can I just, then, declare for the record that I chair the cross-party group on suicide prevention and that Samaritans Cymru, who are appearing before us later, provide the secretariat for that group, just for that to be on the record? Item 2, then, is an evidence session for our inquiry on education otherwise than at school, and I'm very pleased to welcome our panel of witnesses this morning: Sharon Davies, head of learning, Torfaen County Borough Council and representing the Association of Directors of Education in Wales; Nick Williams, director of education, Swansea city and county council, and representing the Association of Directors of Education in Wales; and David Hopkins, interim head of education at the Welsh Local Government Association. Thank you very much, all of you, for attending. We've got a lot of ground we'd like to cover, so we'll go straight into questions, if that's okay. And if I can just start by asking you what you believe the main reasons are for the increase in the number of exclusions from school.
I'll start, if that's okay. I think one of the things we're experiencing across the system in Wales is more examples of very challenging behaviour. I think the prevalence of ASD—autism spectrum disorder—and trying to get the learners the right provision is sometimes a challenge. Obviously, I can speak more about my own local authority in Swansea: the numbers have increased about fourfold over the last five, six years, so what's presenting as difficult behaviour can also sometimes be additional learning needs as well, and the system's struggling a little bit to catch up to have enough capacity to do that, so that is placing pressure on schools and then, in turn, pressure on the EOTAS, including our pupil referral units, because, obviously, we just probably haven't got enough capacity at the moment in the system.
Okay. Anybody got anything to add to that, or—?
No, I think that's what we're seeing in Torfaen as well. I'd second that.