“But we know that selective schools are in high demand, as are specialist art music and sports schools, selective schools are good for pupils particularly the most disadvantaged ones who attend them”.
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Grammars will be required to establish or sponsor a primary feeder school in an area with a high density of lower income households or to sponsor a now underperforming non-selective academy.
Instead, she said her reforms were created to provide “a good school place for every child and one that caters for their individual needs”.
“Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, agreed that expanding pupil selection was “a massive distraction” from the real problems facing the education system”.
The Conservative leader announced the end of a two-decade ban on new grammar schools, which only accept the brightest pupils, as part of a package of reforms meant to build a “truly meritocratic Britain”. We’ve got to… get many more children to achieve well in our schools.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron also said the return to grammars was an “out-of-date, ineffective approach” which would be defeated in the House of Lords, where the Government does not have a majority.
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.
Critics say that wealthier children are more likely to receive a place at grammar schools because their parents can pay for tutoring.
He told the Press Association: “We have to be careful about this debate about grammar schools in connection with our wider goals with social mobility”.
While Labour had promised “education, education, education”, the Conservatives were pursuing “segregation, segregation, segregation”, she claimed.
The Government’s support for grammar schools was confirmed when a photographer snapped a Department for Education official carrying a briefing paper which outlined that a consultation document would recommend the change.
Theresa May has told Conservative backbenchers she supports lifting the ban on grammar schools so every child can have “access to opportunity”.
Because parents want choice for their children and there are some children who want and need to be academically stretched.
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.
Announcing plans to lift Tony Blair’s 1998 ban on selection, the Prime Minister argued it was not a proposal “to go back to a binary model of grammars and secondary models” but “to look to the future”.
Labour shadow Angela Rayner warned MPs that an expansion of grammar schools would “entrench inequality and disadvantage”.
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”.
May’s plans also include “tougher” rules for private schools to defend their charitable status.
Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said Mrs May had no “mandate” for a return to selection.
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Tory unease about grammar schools was laid bare today as ministers challenged Justine Greening over her education plans.
