Thanks for that. I think, for any impartial reader of the way that the trends have been going on this, there is some good news within that, in that, certainly, those schools that might have been identified as have been okay but coasting along, seem to be moving up the categories, although we still do have that—. Well, it's what the system is there to do, it's to identify those schools that do need that additional support. And I like your analogy of a triage system—'You're fit; keep on doing what you're doing and do it well; you need more support, we'll put the support in.' But, can I turn to those schools that are causing significant concern, and how we identify them? The Estyn chief inspector's conclusions at the end of the 2017-18 report that these schools are not being identified early enough—there's a need to do something urgently about these concerns, particularly in secondary schools. Have we addressed that? Are you content that we've addressed that concern? Was he right?
No, the chief inspector is absolutely right—absolutely right. I've got no beef with that statement at all. In some ways, when a school goes into special measures, in a way, that's a failure of the system, because that should have been identified sooner. So I've got no beef, as I said, with the chief inspector saying that.
So just to ask, bearing in mind the earlier discussion we were having, how is it that we don't identify those schools?
That's it—you're quite right. Undoubtedly, what categorisation has done is led to a greater understanding, I think, on behalf of local education authorities' and school improvement services' knowledge about their schools. I think knowledge around schools is greatly enhanced by that process. But we are not there yet in terms of necessarily, then, moving those schools more quickly, once they've been identified as needing the highest level of support to see improvement. And secondary schools is a particular, particular challenge. So you will have seen from the last publication of categorisation data that our primary sector continues to improve—more and more and more of our primary schools are in a green rating, which is very satisfying to me. But we have got more of an issue with secondary schools, and we have a particular issue with the same schools being identified in that level of categorisation. So even though we've identified them as needing that extra help, they are not moving at pace away from that system. So there are two things that we are doing at the moment. The first is, we are, again, looking at different sets of data that can give us even earlier warning systems that things are going wrong in a school—and perhaps Steve will explain later. For instance, staff sickness, and carefully monitoring staff sickness, because there is a direct correlation between high levels of staff sickness in a school and what is going on in the school. And Steve can explain some of this work later. But we're piloting a new approach to those schools that are causing concern. Each local authority has been asked to identify two of their high schools that they are particularly worried about. And we have a new multi-agency approach, working with those schools to try and move them more forward. So it's two from each region, a multi-agency panel, working with the school. And that multi-agency panel includes the school itself, the local authority, the regional consortia school improvement staff, Estyn and Welsh Government—as a multi-agency panel to support improvement in that school. So, for instance, what would normally happen, Estyn would come in, Estyn would make a judgment on the school—requiring special measures or urgent improvement—and Estyn would go away. They'd go away for six months, and then they'd come back in six months, and they'd make another judgment, 'No, still not good enough', and disappear for six months. We're saying—Estyn and the Welsh Government have agreed that's not the best approach; Estyn need to be part of the solution, rather than just coming and making a judgment. The initial feedback from this trial is very, very positive. Actually, we've had local authorities coming to us and saying, 'Can we put more schools in? Rather than just having two of our high schools, can we engage more in this project and this pilot?' It's being evaluated by Cardiff Metropolitan University and Swansea University, so we're having some academic overview to see, actually, does this approach work, can we evidence it—that it actually makes a difference? And it's actually—I'd like to claim all the credit for it, but it's actually not dissimilar to something that's happening in Scotland as well. But we knew that carrying on doing the same old thing clearly wasn't moving these schools, we needed a new approach, and this is what we're doing at the moment. So it's relatively new, but the initial feedback is positive. Steve, I don't know—