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Education Bill
8:00 pm
Mr Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough, Liberal Democrat)
They now have to earn autonomy. To refresh hon. Members' minds, I was saying that schools have delivered on what the Government have asked. They have produced outstanding responses to a whole host of initiatives, some of which they were not keen to participate in. The idea that they now have to earn autonomy is rather sad.
However, if that is to be the case, the amendment suggests that objective criteria should be applied. The Minister has made it clear, throughout the day, that he is prepared to set some objective criteria, and the Committee wants to hear them. I also have problems with the criteria. When the hon. Member for Isle of Wight spoke earlier, and cut to the chase, he started to talk about specific objective criteria. Earlier, I had raised the issue of how to judge whether a school is failing or successful. If one does that simply by narrow, national objective criteria, one can quickly fall foul of it. The comments that I made earlier about five A to Cs are an example of that. If the judgment is made on the basis of exclusions, levels of improvement, or any of those simple objective measures, one will not get to the heart of what the Government want from innovation, and what I hope Opposition parties also want. We must therefore be careful about what criteria we use.
I emphasise, however, that it is important that we have a chance to see what criteria the Government have in mind with regard to earned autonomy. If we do not have that opportunity, schools will be thrashing about in the dark, trying to find out what is in the Government's mind before they make the relevant applications. Although the amendments are slightly flawed, the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West makes a good a point, and I trust that the Minister will respond accordingly.