As I said, I met with him, Steve has met with him, Owen Evans has met with him, my special policy adviser has met with him and had discussions. So, there has been an ongoing dialogue. But, Mark, I hope that I have demonstrated since I took on this job that I am willing to work with a wide variety of people and to tap into their expertise if it can help me to deliver on the national mission. And if the advice to me is that we haven't sufficiently learnt the lessons, then I'll gladly have another conversation. What I'm saying to you—and I'm absolutely confident—is that we have learnt the lessons, we are taking that work and the good practice forward, and we have done that with conversations with a wide variety of people who had a view on this, from individual schools that were involved in the programme, individual people who were working in those schools, local education authorities, some of which have been very scathing about the programme, I should say, regional consortia—. So, the lessons, I am confident, have been learnt.
I'm glad to hear that, Cabinet Secretary, but I still say that, listening to Professor Ainscow's evidence, there was a perception, at least from him individually, that the programme should not be seen to be a failure, but a desire that the lessons should be learnt and a feeling or exception, at least on his part, that there was more that he still had to contribute to the process. And just to take one particular example, I think he referred to the Schools Challenge Cymru advisers being very successful in bringing in people who might not otherwise have contributed to this, and the regional consortia have had greater challenges in recruiting people, perhaps in some areas, of the same high standard of some particular individuals, but also from a wide range of different areas that the Schools Challenge Cymru do, and that there could be more to learn in that area as to how to support real excellence and a greater diversity of recruitment for those people. Is that something you could perhaps draw on his thoughts further about? Because I think he does feel that he has more to say to Welsh Government to help in this area.
Firstly, can I say that I have never described the programme as a failure? I would understand, as someone who has put so much personal investment into the brand of schools challenges, that he would not want anybody to characterise that particular approach to school improvement as a failure. And I want to be absolutely clear that I have never described the programme as a failure, and I want to reassure Mr Ainscow of that. As I've said, gosh, my goodness me, if you saw my e-mail inbox and you saw the letters that come in, people are never shy in coming forward to give me advice on what I need to do, what I need to do next, what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, and, you know, our doors are always open to listen to people who have interesting things to say about how we can deliver our educational mission. So, people aren't slow in coming forward, I can assure you, with advice.
Julie.