Mr Fallon, whose Kent constituency got the first “new” grammar school for five decades past year, said: “The aim is very clear; it’s to have more choice for parents in every part of the country”.
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The Government believes selection “can play a role” in the future of state education, Justine Greening has confirmed.
Setting her sights on making Britain “the world’s great meritocracy”, Prime Minister Theresa May unveiled reforms to widen opportunity in schools on Friday in an appeal to “frustrated” Britons who voted to leave the EU.
Theresa May has announced that she wants to remove the obstacles that are now in place to allow new “selective schools” from opening or current non-selective schools from converting.
Proposals to be announced “very shortly” would offer parents and children across England “a proper choice of good schools” and not “a choice between passing the 11-plus and failing it and having to go off to a sink school of the kind that’s let our children down so badly”, he said.
Ms Greening was forced to the despatch box by an urgent question from her Labour shadow Angela Rayner, who warned MPs that an expansion of grammar schools would “entrench inequality and disadvantage”.
However, the PM faces a tough task taking the plans through Parliament with Labour vowing to oppose the “regressive policy every step of the way”.
Others argue that comprehensives fail the brightest children, and say grammar schools improve social mobility because they select pupils on academic ability rather than parental income, as private schools do.
Modern grammar school set a test known as the 11-plus, which aims to see if prospective pupils would be suited to the school.
He said: “These are very early stages, there has been no consultation process or legislation made, but I think it would have a knock-on impact for Southend”.
But Commons Education Committee chair Neil Carmichael stressed there was “no compelling evidence” that selective grammars help disadvantaged pupils move up the social ladder. In a selective education system, more children will generally fail the test than pass it; now there are three or four times as many children who fail the test than who pass it.
THERESA May last night defended her plans for new grammar schools, which were blasted by an ex-Tory education minister.
“If they are such a good thing for poor children, then why are poor children here in the capital doing so much better than their counterparts in those parts of the country that operate selection?”
She said: “At a time when our schools are facing a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, with thousands taught in super-sized classes and schools facing real-terms cuts to their budget for the first time in almost two decades, pushing ahead with grammar schools shows a risky misunderstanding of the real issues facing our schools”. We are still in the throes of massive change in the education system and teachers at every level are working really hard. Lady Nicholson has previously been a Conservative, leaving to join the Liberal Democrats in 1995.
But in a speech in central London, May also set out new proposals to force independent schools to contribute more to the state sector if they want to keep the charitable status that brings sizeable tax advantages.
They didn’t talk about extending selection to free schools and so on, which seems to be now what they intend to do.
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Critics say that wealthier children are more likely to receive a place at grammar schools because their parents can pay for tutoring.
