Faith school will be able to select pupils based on faith, ending a rule that banned them, from doing so. He said: “This is not selection educationally, it is selection socially”.
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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”.
PLANS to end a ban on opening new grammar schools could benefit generations of south Essex youngsters, senior Southend councillors have claimed.
“However as a county with grammar schools, we would ask that the government focus on a fair funding formula for schools as a priority, so pupils with the same needs are funded in the same way across the country”.
But her ideas were attacked by leading figures including the head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, who accused her of trying to “put the clock back”.
There are around 163 grammar schools in England out of some 3,000 state secondaries, and a further 69 grammar schools in Northern Ireland.
She appears to have accepted the assumption that new grammar schools will improve social mobility, and help poorer children out of a cycle of perpetual disadvantage.
In the Lords the Tories are already in a minority, against an opposition made up largely of Labour and Lib Dem peers who oppose her reforms. Parents and teachers have seen the consequences of choice in school provision.
And Sam Freedman, the executive director of programmes for charity Teach First, said: “Education experts are united that the evidence shows grammar schools harm social mobility”.
So why the sudden change?
A new wave of grammar schools will not discriminate against poorer children and will give them the chance to go to a good school, the Prime Minister will announce.
May, like other Tory MPs who mainly reside in the right of the party, however, argues that a selective education system allows children from less-affluent backgrounds to achieve their academic potential. “If (more of) that is what is being talked about, it will not provide a social mobility dividend, it will be a social mobility disaster”.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: “Theresa May’s argument for grammar schools is so flawed that it does not stand up to the most basic scrutiny”. Redditch MP Karen Lumley said: “I went to a grammar school, and it certainly wasn’t for me. That is simply unfair”, the prime minister said.
And Torbay MP Kevin Foster, whose constituency contains the two Torquay grammar schools, said they add to the “mix of educational opportunities” on offer.
She said that she would be “asking them to do more as a condition of their privileged position to help all children”.
The prime minister presented her plans to allow new and expanded grammar schools, as well as existing comprehensive schools in England, to start selecting by ability.
In fact poorer children in local authorities that now operate a grammar school system perform worse than those in non-selective authorities, and are far less likely to score highly at GCSE. We need to improve all schools, not just let some become grammars.
Current government policy prevents new grammars being set up.
Mrs May’s announcement comes after a document outlining proposals to open new grammar schools was caught by a photographer outside Downing Street on Tuesday.
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If the Prime Minister is serious about improving social mobility, she would do well to listen to her predecessor who warned his backbenches nearly a decade ago that their obsession with grammar schools was “splashing around in the shallow end of the educational debate”.
