And there will be attention paid as to whether Mrs May’s government could face a revolt by her own MPs.
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Alec Shelbrooke, Tory MP for Elmet and Rothwell, and Michelle Donelan, Tory MP for Chippenham, said they were anxious that the plans could lead to children who do not get in to grammar schools being “stigmatised”.
The consultation reveals proposals to allow existing grammar schools to expand and for new selective schools to open.
There were also doubts raised by Nicky Morgan, the former education secretary, who said that increasing academic selection would be at “best a distraction” and risked “undermining six years of progressive education reform”. “This could lead to a divisive system and put the clock back on education, negating much of the great progress we have made over the last few years”.
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 debate will also be watched with interest by academy trusts which run most secondary schools in England – many are uneasy about the plans”.
“I was incredibly lucky when I was a young girl growing up”, she said.
She is the first education secretary to have gone to a mainstream comprehensive school. But instead a system that isn’t “saying to poorer and some of the most disadvantaged children in our country that they can’t have the kind of education their richer counterparts can enjoy”. “I don’t think that’s a good message for our children”.
“And I want every teacher and every school to have the resources and the capacity to deliver on those promises”. They require bold decisions and a lot of hard work, and no doubt there will be opposition to overcome. “The notion that the poor stand to benefit from the return of grammar schools strikes me as quite palpable tosh and nonsense – and is very clearly refuted by the London experience”. “That is a hallmark of a truly meritocratic Britain”.
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Anna Soubry MP said there was “no desire” in her constituency for selection and that she knew some comprehensives which were “more like a Borstal than a school”, while Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke told MPs he was anxious that new grammars would “create stigma” for those who do not get in. Even more to the point, nearly none of the “experts” spewing out fear and loathing over the dire effect of grammar schools makes reference to the vast wastelands to the North, where their absence has been most deleterious.
