Clause 2 - Power to suspend statutory requirements etc.
[Part I]Education Bill
6:15 pm
Mr Stephen Timms (Minister of State (School Standards), Department for Education and Skills; East Ham, Labour)
The Secretary of State will refer to experience elsewhere and will take the advice she needs to form a judgment. It may be an entirely new and untried proposal, and there will not therefore be any direct evidence. I am sure that that would have been one of the characteristics of the hon. Gentleman's innovations. The Secretary of State will then take a view on the basis of the best advice available about whether that will raise standards. That is the test that will be applied. She will not ask whether a proposal is innovative enough, but whether it will raise standards. If she concludes that it will, she will give her assent.
Part of the time the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough seems to be trying to put boundaries around that point, and that is precisely what we should not do. We should allow heads who are almost as creative and imaginative as he was to come forward with their own proposals. If they believe that those proposals will raise standards in their schools, we should encourage them to put them to the Secretary of State, and she will take a view about them.