Very significant.
In your report, the 'Alignment of the Childcare Offer for Wales to the Foundation Phase', one of the recommendations was that 'The Welsh Government, local authority education and childcare policy and delivery teams could merge'. So, looking behind the scenes, those disparate parts of policy, delivering the foundation phase and childcare offer should merge. Is that the case? Has that been put under way and should we be looking at this structure in more depth?
Well, probably not at the structure at this time because the report that you're referring to was looking at the first year of the delivery of the childcare offer and it did make a number of points, which we have taken on board. For example, we issued guidance last year regarding the delivery of the foundation phase, which supports widening the number of non-maintained settings that are able to deliver early education and we're also supporting co-location and partnership working between education and childcare providers through our capital investment programme. I think it's about £81 million that we put into the capital investment where we are developing childcare facilities co-located with the education facilities, because that was one of the things that came out from this report you're referring to. And, I mean, obviously, early years is one of the key priorities within 'Prosperity for All' and, obviously, education sits within one portfolio with the Minister for Education, and childcare is with me. But we're doing what we can to work together to try to bring those together, and that was one of the proposals in that report. But it's still very early to think about, at this stage, a structural change.
And I remember when you were on the committee here with me, sitting next to me, we had those discussions about co-location. I know the problem with not having co-location is that you could end up seeing a child travelling between three or more locations during the course of a day. Are you suggesting now that the actions you're taking will resolve that issue universally, or will it lead to a piecemeal resolution? And, if so, to what extent, what percentage of children will see that resolved as an issue?