It was “completely illogical to make it illegal to open good new schools”, she said.
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Many educationalists say creating new grammar schools will lower standards in comprehensives.
Theresa May insisted she will defy opposition to push through her plans for a new generation of selective grammar schools in the state system.
There are also plans to relax rules that stop faith schools from selecting more than half of pupils according to religion and to allow more faith schools to open.
Mr Gibb made the comments at the ResearchEd conference in London this morning just a day after prime minister Theresa May announced her hugely controversial plans to dramatically expand the number of grammar schools in England.
“It is important that children are able to attend a school which delivers a curriculum which both excites them and which plays to their strengths”.
Ms Rayner said: “Theresa May talks about standing up for the majority but her actions reveal the opposite: working for the few at the expense of the many”.
Investment in crumbling buildings; equipping classes properly; employing more teachers, paying them better and removing the bureaucracy which is turning so many away; ensuring school leaders have the abilities and the skills to lead properly.
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 unsafe misunderstanding of the real issues facing our schools”.
“There is no convincing evidence to suggest that a return to selection will promote educational achievement, particularly for those from more disadvantaged backgrounds”.
They’re popular with parents, she says.
“However I am concerned that they are not being used for the goal they were created for – which is to give children from poorer backgrounds a better chance at life”.
This after the Prime Minister told her backbenchers that “selection by house price” already existed within the state school system – the more money you have, the more likely you are to go to a “good” school. “We do not want to jeopardise our progress for our children by yet another ill thought out educational experiment imposed on us from above”.
Grammar school students do not account for a massive percentage of students at Oxford.
The PM said: “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”.
Fellow Tories Neil Carmichael, who chairs the Commons education committee, and Sarah Wollaston, who chairs the Commons health committee, also expressed concerns, underlining the scale of the battle Mrs May faces in getting the radical reforms through Westminster.
Grammar schools had their heyday in the 1950s, but were phased out from the mid-1960s and a ban was introduced on new schools in 1998.
That’s because, if the senior people I’ve spoken to are an indication, most multi-academy trusts are hovering somewhere between disbelief and horror at the idea that some bright pupils might be cherry picked by new grammar schools.
The Economist argued that children from wealthier families also have an unfair advantage as they have the means to pay for extra tuition to prep for the entrance exams required to get into these schools.
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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”.
