Clause 5
Education and Inspections Bill
11:30 am
Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
Of course we want the very best. It is up to policy-makers to assess how to achieve the best school improvement partners given the limited resources available to us as a country. Amendment No. 191 seeks to do that.
Good education policy can often be implemented by exhortation and dissemination of best practice. Only on issues of major importance—such as phonics, for example—should it be necessary to change the national curriculum by regulation. The Government’s approach is to pile on initiative after initiative that may or may not contribute in some minor way to raising standards, but that will certainly impose time-consuming activities on teachers and head teachers. That is the point that I am trying to make. There is a distinction between important measures that will deliver higher standards and those measures that are burdensome to teachers and head teachers.