Much of the debate will focus on whether grammar schools are good for social mobility, but it is also worth considering the political calculations behind a policy change that goes against the Govian thinking that has driven government education policy since 2010.
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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has promised to fight against the expansion of grammar schools, insisting that “alliances will be formed” in parliament in order to do so.
“I’m not just sceptical, I am dead against it – but what it does do, of course is divert attention away from other things, like fairer funding”.
Conor Burns has said there is definitely a place in our education system for grammar schools – but they need to go back to the founding principle of helping children from poorer backgrounds.
“Today’s announcement has opened up opportunities for the council to consider and review how we support the school system to develop further opportunities for our residents”.
“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”.
I have yet to speak to anybody who is in support of this proposal.
The founder of Christian charity Oasis, which through its education trust Oasis Community Learning is responsible for 47 Academies in England and is one of the UK’s biggest education providers, said none of its schools would select students by ability or by faith.
The Prime Minister told the 1922 Committee of backbench Tories she wanted to create a “21st century education system” with an “element of selection”, sources who were at the meeting said.
The Prime Minister has said that her approach to policy will be to assemble the evidence, look at the evidence, and then come to a decision.
Ofsted’s chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, said the idea that poor children would benefit from a return of grammar schools was “nonsense”.
The National Union of Teachers (NUT) accused Mrs May of “taking education back to the 1950s, when children were segregated at age 11 and their life chances determined by the type of school they attended”.
She declined to say how many grammars she would ideally like to see and ducked a question asking whether the government would be producing evidence from academics or Whitehall officials showing that the policy would improve educational attainment for all.
She stressed: “This is not a proposal to go back to a binary model of grammars and secondary moderns but to build on our increasingly diverse schools system”. This is about opening the system to a greater diversity.
“In many ways we can only do this because there has been the improvement in education across the board in this country since 2010”.
Nicky Morgan, who was education secretary under May’s predecessor David Cameron, said after the speech that she continues to oppose the extension of academic selection for schools, suggesting May will find it hard to get the change through Parliament.
But Ms Rayner told the Education Secretary: “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”.
It is thought numerous free schools announced by her predecessor David Cameron could become grammar schools under the changes.
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And former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, who was sacked by May in July, described the plans as “weird”. She’ll also require universities that want to increase tuition fees to sponsor under-performing schools.
