Yes, and similarly in England, the examination boards working in England would have provided the same advice to the Government there. And, of course, the Welsh Government programme was associated with the reform programme in England, in particularly for those A-level subjects, where there was a strong influence from the universities across the UK in terms of what they wanted to see differently in the A-level subjects. So, England and Wales have run on a very short timetable common to both countries, and I would say that every exam board and every publisher has seen this very challenging in Wales and England. But our advice is that there is a real need for between 18 months and two years from completing a specification that has been approved, then being able to work with teachers on what their needs and requirements will be, thinking about what the teaching programme will be, and then starting to work with publishers and get resources available—ideally, with a year of preparation then for the teacher before they start teaching. So, as they will know what resources will be available, we'll be able to discuss the use of those resources in our professional development programmes, and then that timeline is convenient for everybody.
Okay. Darren, I've got to bring Llyr in now.
Estyn, NAHT, UCAC, NASUWT, WJEC and Qualifications Wales have pointed to the way in which the Government has managed the reforms that have been happening over the past few years as one of the things that has led to some of these difficulties. You mentioned the fact that they come wave upon wave. Well, what about the tsunami of curriculum reform that we're currently facing? That is, how confident can we be that the situation won't deteriorate as the new curriculum is introduced—rather than improve?
That is a very key question, isn't it? We have started to discuss this, specifically in particular in a forum that includes publishers in Wales, with the Welsh Government around the table and Qualifications Wales around the table. I think one of the very interesting questions and important questions is: what will the nature of the information available in April 2019 be in terms of the new curriculum? At what level of detail will it be? To what extent will it be adapted again after April 2019? Is it detailed enough, really, for teachers to start discussing their programmes of teaching, and that we then still have a role with publishers, even though this is for this curriculum and not for qualifications? WJEC has a tradition of publishing resources over the key stages and other key stages as well. I think there is a need to discuss the implications of the timetable as it starts to appear, because there is a need to start teaching the new curriculum in September 2022. If we're talking about a year of preparation, that brings us back to September 2021. If we're talking about working on resources available for that preparation year, we're talking about September 2020. So, the timetable does appear already tight, particularly if there's something that's not quite certain about that curriculum statement in 2019, and that there is a lot of work to turn that into teaching programmes. So, I think it is a key question, and I can't be confident at the moment that this is going to work.