“I want a good education for every child”, he said.
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Cllr Nick Small, the council’s cabinet member for education and assistant mayor, said: “Evidence shows that where there’s no selection by ability, every child, including the brightest children, do better”.
“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”.
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.
The Government will provide £50 million a year to support the expansion of existing grammars, she announced.
Mrs May, who took over as prime minister following the European Union referendum in June, was also expected to say that faith schools would be allowed to admit more pupils on the basis of their religious background.
Under the plans, any state comprehensive or academy will be allowed to convert into a grammar school as long as they fulfill certain criteria.
He said countries such as Finland and China who have the best-performing education systems do not have selection. He gave pupils 8 points for an A* down to 1 point for a G, and then took a total for each pupil based on the grades they achieved in English, maths, and their three other best subjects.
“In a true meritocracy, we should not be apologetic about stretching the most academically able to the very highest standards of excellence”.
Another criticism of grammars, which typically select pupils after they sit an entrance exam at 11 years old, is that the schools are dominated by the children of middle-class parents.
Lincolnshire NUT Divisional Secretary Ken Rustidge said that he was concerned about how the proposals would impact on non-grammar schools in the county.
“I don’t think that’s a good message for our children”.
Mrs May claimed the raft of reforms would “set Britain on the path to being the great meritocracy of the world”.
“I want to see children from ordinary, working class families given the chances their richer contemporaries take for granted”, May concluded.
He added: “Where there is failure and disadvantage, the answer should not be this festival of bring-backery but instead a focus on expanding opportunity for all schools right across the system”.
Labour has accused Mrs May of favouring an education system that will only cater for the “select few” while unions suggested her plans are elitist.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the government needed to “widen choice” for parents.
She told the meeting: “We have already got selection, haven’t we – it’s called “selection by house price”.
“If the plans for grammar expansions go ahead, it should be of critical importance to build and strengthen more practical educational routes as well, to ensure that whatever your academic ability, no one gets left behind”.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said the return to grammars was an ” out-of-date, ineffective approach” which would be defeated in the House of Lords.
In a further sign of the difficulties Mrs May will face getting the plans through Parliament, Tory MP Karen Lumley said she was against the proposals “and very sceptical” that poor children would benefit from the return of grammars.
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Universities that want to raise tuition fees for students will be obliged to make their expertise available to younger learners, by setting up a new school or taking over an existing failing school, for example.
