It follows a long-running campaign to provide selective places in the town, launched by parents who said pupils had to travel long distances to take up grammar school places.
Advertisement
Sir Michael Wilshaw, who is the outgoing Ofsted chief inspector of schools, criticised the proposals, saying: “If grammar schools are the great answer, why aren’t there more in London?”
Asked why the former education secretary Nicky Morgan, Gibb’s former boss at the Department for Education, had called it a retrograde step, the Bognor MP claimed the green paper and consultation document to be published on Monday would win over critics, without mentioning Morgan by name.
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”.
In her first major policy speech since becoming PM, Mrs May said the reforms were part of a wider programme to address the “sense of frustration” among struggling voters revealed in the European Union referendum. As a result, a considerable percentage of its youngsters went on to higher education, which helped to produce the almost-never-mentioned fact that in the Sixties, Britain had the highest proportion of university students from working-class backgrounds of any European country.
“And I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit not privilege; where it is your talent and hard work that matter, not where you were born, who your parents are or what your accent sounds like”.
May’s speech, her first set of announcements on domestic policy since she became prime minister in July, sparked controversy over grammar schools, which select children at the age of 10 or 11 on the basis of tests.
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”.
“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”.
Ms Greening said the Government planned to introduce a range of conditions which new grammars would have to meet in order to open and that would likely include “demonstrating local demand” for places.
“Where once under Labour we had “education, education, education” this Government’s mantra is segregation, segregation, segregation”. “We’re not in that world any more”, he said.
“My fear is that by dividing children at 11 and by creating grammars and secondary moderns – because that’s what we’ll do – we won’t be able to achieve that ambition”.
Labour’s John Asworth said it was “utterly ludicruous” for the PM ‘to stand up and talk about creating a great meritocracy and then in the next breath announce a return to grammar schools’.
And this chart, from the Government’s school performance checker, appears to show that selective schools don’t take the poorest children.
The plans have been backed by several Conservative-linked pressure groups and think-tanks but have drawn criticism from opposition parties, unions and other independent organisations.
Tory MP Sarah Wollaston today said her intention to expand faith schools will lead to “segregation” and vowed to vote against them in the Commons.
Advertisement
“My concern is we say grammar schools are the best, we want more of them”.
