She is the first education secretary to have gone to a mainstream comprehensive school.
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Pressure was also applied by the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), which issued a study concluding: “There is robust evidence that attending a grammar school is good for the attainment and later earnings of those who get in”.
Grammars will be required to establish or sponsor a primary feeder school in an area with a high density of lower income households or to sponsor a now underperforming non-selective academy.
Mrs Morgan said she was not convinced allowing a new generation of grammar schools would help the poor, adding: ‘I think it will be hard to support the proposal as it stands’.
“It is not a proposal to go back to the 1950s, but to look to the future, and that future I believe is an exciting one”.
According to the Guardian, Ms May will say during a speech in London: “For too long we have tolerated a system that contains an arbitrary rule preventing selective schools from being established – sacrificing children’s potential because of dogma and ideology”.
In Britain, the class system and the classroom are intertwined, and education reforms inevitably cause political controversy.
She said existing grammars to expand, and new ones could be created, and the reforms would stop the wealthy choosing their children’s school by buying a house near it.
Limits on how many pupils of a certain religion can be admitted to faith schools will also be lifted, in a move which is particularly aimed at expanding Catholic education.
And the Grammar School Heads Association welcomed the suggestion that grammar schools which run multi academy trusts could open up completely new selective schools within those trusts, rather than relying on annexes to existing schools.
Setting her sights on making Britain “the world’s great meritocracy”, Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled reforms to widen opportunity in schools on Friday in an appeal to “frustrated” Britons who voted to leave the EU.
Increasing capacity and encouraging successful institutions, including fee-paying private schools, to work to boost standards at other schools would help overcome the complaint of a shortage of good establishments especially in poorer areas, she said.
“In the coming months we will work with all schools interested in taking up the opportunities the announcement offers them, including continuing our aspiration for expansion of grammar provision”.
“Where once under Labour we had “education, education, education” this Government’s mantra is segregation, segregation, segregation”.
Noting that Mr Cameron said in 2007 that rejecting calls for grammars was a “key test” of whether the Tories were fit for office, Mr Ashworth said: “It’s utterly ludicrous for Theresa May to stand up and talk about creating a “great meritocracy” and then in the next breath announce a return to grammar schools”. We’ve got to… get many more children to achieve well in our schools.
‘The government need to know; going down this route will only bring battles and an inevitable defeat in the Lords, ‘ commented Lib Dem leader Tim Farron.
Labour also attacked the policy, with education spokesman Angela Rayner saying it amounted to “segregation, segregation, segregation”.
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Ms Greening said she would “very much like to see some of the most disadvantaged communities in our country perhaps get the chance now to have a grammar”.
