Mr. Dalton Tattan:

I will pass some of the Deputy's questions over to Dr. Hislop but I will address the issue of the timeline for the decision. I will preface what I am saying by advising that account be taken of the fact that litigation is ongoing, some of which is focused on the decision to which the Deputy is referring. I will do my best to answer while having regard to that difficulty. Over the summer, there were calls in respect of the school profiling element. There was quite a degree of commentary in the media with regard to whether it would have an unfair impact on schools, and particularly on disadvantaged schools in disadvantaged areas serving disadvantaged communities. We were very cognisant of that with regard to the standardisation model. We did not categorise the results coming out on 7 September as a delay. There was a very tight timeframe as it was. We had always said publicly that we would issue the results as close to the normal date as possible but we had not committed to that date until the announcement to which the Deputy referred. That was as much time as we needed to get everything done while also making the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, UCAS, deadline and the deadlines for entry into higher education in other jurisdictions.

The decision to remove the historical school-by-school data was effectively made in the middle of August. The Minister made that decision.