Mr Ireson said she should stop tinkering with policy: “They need to have a wholescale look, if they’re thinking grammar schools are good, you don’t just want them in one area”.
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In a major speech, the prime minister said an arbitrary rule preventing selective schools from being established had been tolerated for too long. It has failed to make minority faith schools more diverse, because parents of other religions and none do not send their children to those schools.
Cllr Gough said the views of the Ofsted chief were not new and improving social mobility was not just confined to grammar schools.
“Between 2010 and 2015 their fees rose four times faster than average earnings growth, while the percentage of their pupils who come from overseas has gone up by 33% since 2008”.
“So I am in favour of selection, inside as well as outside of the school”.
And she set out a series of measures meant to ensure that new and expanded grammars make places available to children from disadvantaged backgrounds and help improve standards in non-selective schools. He’s said to be one of the people supporting the idea of allowing more grammar schools to open.
Morgan wrote on her Facebook page: “I believe that an increase in pupil segregation on the basis of academic selection would be at best a distraction from crucial reforms to raise standards and narrow the attainment gap and at worse risk actively undermining six years of progressive education reform”. “That is simply unfair”, May said.
We will fail as a nation if we only get the top 15% to 20% of our children achieving well. For decades British children were tested at age 11, with those who did best going to academically focused grammar schools, and the rest to “secondary moderns” which gave them little chance of getting to university.
And it is this level of academic excellence that Theresa May wants to offer to more children in the United Kingdom and formed the backbone of the raft of reforms she announced today.
“A good comprehensive, a good all-ability school can deliver for the most able children and we’re seeing more of that now”.
“This is about opening the system up to a greater diversity”. She said that she would be “asking them to do more as a condition of their privileged position to help all children”.
“By enshrining selection into our education system the Prime Minister is wilfully ignoring the overwhelming evidence that selection at 11 leads to a more unequal country”.
May’s Conservative predecessor, David Cameron, opposed expanding grammar schools, saying parents “don’t want children divided into successes and failures at 11”. They outnumbered those who loved the grammars.
“A Sutton Trust report showed that less than three per cent of entrants to grammar schools are entitled to free school meals, while many grammar school heads were concerned that children from middle class families were coached to pass the entrance exam”.
In responding to an urgent question on the issue in parliament today, the Secretary of State for Education, Justine Greening, said: “We do think selection can play a role”.
She said such institutions were able to “reduce their tax bills by millions every year”, and said those with capacity would be required to set up free schools and sponsor institutions which are struggling.
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“The SoS’s (Secretary of State’s) clear position is that this should be presented in the con doc as an option, and only to be pursued once we have worked with existing grammars to show how they can be expanded and reformed in ways which avoid disadvantaging those who don’t get in”.
