Thank you. You've made the comment that secondary schools are focusing too much on key stage 4 and not enough on developing pupils' skills in a sustainable way. Can you expand on that and give us a bit more detail on that, please?
Yes. I think this is sort of generally accepted now. The latest guidance on the grant now says that 60 per cent of it should be spent on key stage 3. I think that acknowledges this general point. But what a lot of schools did with this money was precisely that, to target key stage 4—to have catch-up homework clubs, revision clubs, specifically to get children better GCSE results, and getting C grades, in particular. Of course, that is an important part of your armoury of tools to use, but I think there was too much use of that. Part of the problem with that is that it doesn't either develop the long-term transferable skills that those pupils have, or should have, nor does it produce the kinds of skills that the teachers need as well. So, it's kind of a quick win, a quick-fix solution, while what we feel would be more effective in the long term, and more sustainable in the long term—because if this money goes, then those quick fixes won't be possible—what would be more effective in the long term is to improve the curriculum and the pedagogy, the quality of the teaching, the quality of the curriculum, so that children are naturally enthused by what is on offer, that they attend better because they want to be in school, that they want to learn. So, we feel that getting the curriculum right, tailoring the curriculum to the needs of the pupils in that area, and improving teaching, is a more sustainable long-term solution.
Do you think there's anything in particular driving the focus on the key stage 4?
Well, again, I think most people would say it is the performance indicators. I think there's a general acknowledgement of that. Again, I said last week—. There was a conference of all the secondary heads in Wales, and that was one of the major discussion points in the conference: how do we get the performance indicators right so that there are no perverse incentives in it?