She added: “This is not a proposal to go back to the 1950s, but look to the future”.
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Writing in the Daily Mail, May insisted her plans would give all parents the chance to send their children to a “great school”.
In Britain, the class system and the classroom are intertwined, and education reforms inevitably cause political controversy.
She says she wants any school – including new schools, free schools and existing comprehensives – to have the chance to change into a grammar school and impose selection.
Creating clear blue sea with her predecessor David Cameron, May will propose that the existing 163 grammar schools can expand, and the law will be changed so that a new generation of the selective schools can open.
NORTH Wiltshire MP James Gray has spoken out in support of government plans, announced today, to lift the ban on introducing new grammar schools.
Academic selection was allowed to continue in some parts of England but there would be no new grammar schools built.
She argued that existing regulation only really impacted on largely oversubscribed and successful Catholic schools.
“Politicians, many of whom benefited from the very kind of education they now seek to deny to others, have for years put their own dogma before the interests and concerns of ordinary people.
We need to provide enough information to parents about what they should do [to enter the test]”. One option would be that only schools rated good or outstanding by Ofsted can select while another option may require schools to show there is support from parents.
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 want to widen opportunities to those professions”, Gibb told the ResearchEd national conference in London.
Morgan wrote on her Facebook page: “I believe that an increase in pupil segregation on the basis of academic selection would be at best a distraction from crucial reforms to raise standards and narrow the attainment gap and at worse risk actively undermining six years of progressive education reform”.
According to May this shake up in the school system is aimed towards allowing academically gifted children to excel to their full potential even if they come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
She also said the 11plus would not act as a cliff edge for children, as they could move to a grammar school later, with intakes at 14 and 16 too. We’ve got to… get many more children to achieve well in our schools.
Thurrock council now has no grammars but told the Sunday Times it is committed to “attracting grammar school places”.
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: ” If the Conservatives care about our children’s education they should reverse their cuts to school budgets.
A new grammar school has not been opened since the 1960s, when they started to be converted into all-ability comprehensives. This was “unfounded” because there is a diverse school share, from free schools sponsored by universities to faith schools. This is about opening the system to a greater diversity.
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She said many who voted to leave the European Union were also expressing a far more profound sense of frustration about aspects of life in Britain and the way in which politics and politicians have failed to respond to their concerns.
