Jeremy Corbyn used Prime Minister’s Questions to attack the Prime Minister over her plans to bring back grammar schools.
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Labour MPs cheered their leader as he told the Commons the policy was “heading backwards to a failed segregation for the few and second-class schooling for the many”.
Claiming the plans had united the entire education profession in opposition, Mr Corbyn pressed the PM to confirm how existing grammar schools in Kent and Buckinghamshire would be required to widen their admissions criteria.
Mr Corbyn pointed to Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw’s description of the suggestion a move back to grammars could help poorer children as “palpable tosh and nonsense”.
Malcolm Trobe, interim General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, added: “We don’t need more selection in the education system”.
And War Horse author Michael Morpurgo branded them “quite deeply stupid”, creating huge numbers of children who will “fail, and fail young”.
As ding followed dong, the PM then said: “He went to a grammar school, I went to a grammar school; it’s what got us to where we are today but my side might be rather happy about that than his”.
“Let me quote her a critic of grammar schools”, he began.
“It is members of the Labour Party who will take the advantages of a good education for themselves and pull up the ladder behind them for other people”.
Anti-Corbyn MP Jamie Reed, who dramatically resigned from the front bench just minutes after Mr Corbyn won the leadership last summer, was among those to praise the leader, tweeting: “Jeremy Corbyn entirely right on grammar schools”.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Education said: “We know that grammar schools provide a good education for their disadvantaged pupils and we want more pupils from lower-income backgrounds to benefit from that”. We don’t need and never should divide children at the age of 11, where the majority end up losing out.
Grammars are secondary schools which select pupils based on entry exams children sit at the age 11.
Political commentators were also impressed, with some labelling the performance Mr Corbyn’s best ever.
May hit back: ‘Can I say to the honorable gentleman that he needs to stop casting his mind back to the 1950s’. This is in that territory.
The former education secretary Nicky Morgan has said she won’t support proposals.
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But the prime minister now appears to intend to kickstart the biggest shake-up of education in England in decades by unveiling a comprehensive package of measures to radically increase the number of good school places – in order to ensure that all children have the best possible start in life.
