Grammars ‘should get more cash’

GRAMMAR schools should be allowed to expand to meet parental demand for more places, the Education Secretary said yesterday.

Damian Hinds wants to extend funding available to comprehensives for new classrooms and facilities to selective schools.

‘When it is possible for them to expand physically, I want them to be able to expand,’ he told The Sunday Times. ‘There are capital sources available for most schools to be able to do that when they want to.

‘I’m looking at how to also facilitate that for selective schools.’

There are 163 grammar schools left in England. A law passed two decades ago under Labour means new grammars are banned.

Theresa May wanted to repeal the law and create a new generation of selective schools, but she was forced to drop the plans amid fears that opponents on the Tory benches could scupper them.

Mr Hinds, who went to a Catholic grammar school in Manchester, also said he intended to lift a cap on new faith schools that means they cannot recruit more than half their pupils by religion.