“And I’ll abolish employment tribunal fees that have priced people out of justice, especially women who’ve not been able to fight back against unfair dismissal for things like pregnancy and sexual discrimination”.
Advertisement
She wants to see existing grammars expand and new selective schools created, but with improved access for disadvantaged pupils. This could involve taking a proportion of pupils from lower-income backgrounds or opening a “feeder” primary school in disadvantaged areas.
Ms Greening insisted: “There will be no return to the simplistic, binary choice of the past where schools separate children into winners and losers, successes or failures”.
I have yet to speak to anybody who is in support of this proposal.
She posted on Facebook: “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”.
Downing Street declined to comment on the leak, but made an argument for the abolition of the rule on faith schools in similar terms to an argument made publicly earlier this year by Nick Timothy, one of the prime minister’s two chiefs of staff.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, has warned it could lead the United Kingdom to “fail as a nation” if there is a system where only the top 15-20% of pupils get a superior education.
Traditionally grammar school were designed for pupils who would go on to higher education (and therefore better jobs) while secondary schools were for children who would go straight into trade jobs.
In a further sign of the difficulties Mrs May will face getting the plans through Parliament, Tory MP Karen Lumley said she was against the proposals “and very sceptical” that poor children would benefit from the return of grammars.
The head of Ofsted has ripped into Theresa May’s plans to lift the ban on new grammar schools, saying the nation would “fail” if it were to return to a selective system.
This week, research from Lloyds Bank showed many parents would pay an average of £53,000 extra to secure homes close to good schools with average house prices now £366,744 in the catchment areas surrounding England’s top 30 state schools, compared to a general average of £313,318 elsewhere.
“In many ways we can only do this because there has been the improvement in education across the board in this country since 2010”.
If parents support selective education, it’s often because they imagine their child will make the grade.
Along with Teach First, King’s College London and others, Oxford University has warned that the government’s grammar school plans would abandon many secondary school students to a “second rate” education.
It is thought numerous free schools announced by her predecessor David Cameron could become grammar schools under the changes.
A Sutton Trust report showed that less than 3% of entrants to grammar schools are entitled to free school meals, while many grammar school heads were concerned that children from middle class families were coached to pass the entrance exam.
– requiring them to sponsor an existing underperforming, non-selective academy school. How can a meritocratic Britain let this situation stand?
Advertisement
“Rather than becoming consumed in a debate about even more educationally and socially divisive changes to the structure of our school system, the Prime Minister should focus on tackling the deep educational inequalities which are the legacy of her predecessor”.
