In her first major policy announcement Mrs May confirmed that new selective schools will be allowed to open and existing schools could convert to grammars.
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It could also underline the influence of one of her long-time advisers, Nick Timothy, who past year called for the creation of new selective grammar schools to give parents more choice and has frequently praised his grammar-school education for offering him chances his working-class parents did not have.
Conditions are also set to be placed on schools wishing to convert to grammar status, requiring them to take a proportion of pupils from low income households.
The Prime Minister also unveiled moves to remove tax breaks for private schools who do not take in enough children from non-privileged backgrounds, as she repeatedly pledged to improve the chances of “ordinary, working class families”.
Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner quickly dismissed May’s plans.
Universities who want to charge higher fees should be required to set up a new school or sponsor an existing underperforming school.
“It is a future in which every child should have access to a good school place”.
Update 2.31pm: Councillor Natasha Airey, the Royal Borough’s cabinet member for children’s services, says: “The Royal Borough continues to invest in education of all types in the borough and we want to provide parents with choice when deciding on schooling for their children”.
A new grammar school has not been opened since the 1960s, when they started to be converted into all-ability comprehensives.
On bringing back grammar schools, she claimed that: “this is not a proposal to go back to a binary model of grammars and secondary moderns”.
– Write to your MP to tell them what you think about the government’s plans for the education system. This has not been achieved by selection by ability but by a ruthless commitment to helping every child reach their potential regardless of their starting point.
“They want change. And this government is going to deliver it”, May said in her speech in central London.
Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: “If the Conservatives care about our children’s education they should reverse their cuts to school budgets”.
The chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, has said grammar schools are “stuffed full of middle-class kids”.
Nicky Morgan, who was education secretary under May’s predecessor David Cameron, said after the speech that she continues to oppose the extension of academic selection for schools, suggesting May will find it hard to get the change through Parliament. When Theresa May urged us to not “get lost in the argument about whether the grammar schools of the 1950s and 60s improved social mobility or not” she did so because she knows that argument has already been lost.
But she was not the only one raising concerns about what could turn out to be the biggest education reforms in a fifty years.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has promised to fight against the expansion of grammar schools, insisting that “alliances will be formed” in parliament in order to do so.
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Dr Luke says it is time to look at school admissions across the education sector, rather than relying on the assumption that “selective means great”.
