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Education and Inspections Bill

The hon. Gentleman identifies a fundamental difference of opinion between us, which leads me on to my final point. Last Friday, I attended a debate at the Harvard Business School. Professors spoke about educational problems in America and described precisely the same problems that have been identified this afternoon. In America, one option is known as the Edmonton model, by which schools are given complete independence to do as they like. The other model gives much more control to school boards. Under that model, outsiders have to be vetted carefully in exactly the way set out by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly). In its wisdom, the Harvard Business School has determined that structure makes much less difference than the quality of a given head teacher. That may be the only element of my speech to find general agreement around the House. So why are we so obsessed with structure, when we know that it makes very little difference? If we agree that the quality of the head teacher is crucial to a school’s success, why do we lack the confidence to give head teachers the power to run their schools as they want? They are the professionals: why do we in this Chamber think that we must always second-guess them? Why can we never trust the people who have been trained, at such expense, to run our schools?