May to lift ban on grammar schools

PM seeks to reverse block on selective education to promote social mobility

THERESA MAY is planning to launch a new generation of grammar schools by scrapping the ban on them imposed almost 20 years ago, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. In a move that will be cheered by Tory grassroots, the Prime Minister intends to pave the way for a new wave of selective schools.

Mrs May is understood to see the reintroduction of grammar schools – banned by Tony Blair in 1998 – as a key part of her social mobility agenda.

The historic shift in policy is expected to be announced by the end of the year, possibly as early as the Conservative Party conference in October.

It marks a major departure from David Cameron’s policy after he repeatedly refused to give in to pressure from backbenchers on the issue.

A government source said that allowing new grammar schools was about “social mobility and making sure that people have the opportunity to capitalise on all of their talents”.

Tory MPs who have campaigned for the change for years were jubilant, saying that allowing more academic selection was a “victory for common sense”.

Voters also want to see new grammar schools, with more than twice as many supporting an end to the ban than keeping it, according to an exclusive ORB poll for this newspaper. Around seven in 10 Britons want to see the ban lifted and eight in 10 believe grammar schools can boost social mobility when undecided voters are removed.

Justine Greening, the Education Secretary, and her team are understood to now be examining the change.

Campaigners hope the Government will both allow new grammar schools to be created and let existing academies and free schools introduce selection.

Graham Brady, who quit the party’s front bench in 2007 over Mr Cameron’s stance, said the change would help “raise standards in state education”.

Mr Blair blocked the creation of new English grammar schools in 1998. There are now just 163 grammars left in England, with a further 69 in Northern Ireland.

Hope of overturning the ban dwindled under Mr Cameron. But when Mrs May, herself grammar school-educated, entered Number 10 and promoted a string of MPs who backed ending the ban campaigners grew optimistic.

Gareth Johnson, a Tory MP who declined to become Parliamentary Private Secretary for Mrs Greening so he could campaign on grammar schools, said the change “makes absolute sense”.

While new grammars are banned, “annexes” to existing ones are allowed under the current rules.

One new annexe in Sevenoaks, Kent, is due to open in 2017 after being signed off by ministers last year following a prolonged public row.

Theresa May began her campaign for greater meritocracy with her Cabinet. It contains the lowest proportion of independently educated ministers since the Forties, and nearly as many grammar school graduates as those who went to private schools. Why is the grammar system so heavily represented in British political leadership? Because it gets results. Grammars take people from all backgrounds, nurture their talents and, very often, pass them on to Oxbridge. No wonder it has long been a Conservative dream to bring them back.

A dream no longer, perhaps. Today we are pleased to report that the Government is expected to lift the ban on building new grammar schools by the end of the year. At present it can feel harder to construct a new grammar than a nuclear power station. All that is permitted is an annexe to an existing institution and, as the battle over expanding a school in Kent has proven, even that can be absurdly difficult. For the liberal elite, grammars are as invidious as hanging or the Empire – and that elite holds a tight grip over educational policy.

The pre-Sixties system was far from perfect, but it gave postwar Britain a startling degree of social mobility. Some on the Left see the desire to escape poverty as a betrayal of class, others as a betrayal of utopian egalitarianism. What the Left too rarely does is consider the ambitions of the individual pupil. As a consequence, studies consistently show that people from poorer backgrounds stay poor in modern Britain, while those who happen to enjoy a background of wealth pass their privileges on from one generation to the next. David Cameron’s government did try to address this and Michael Gove’s expansion of academies saw an attempt to raise the quality and diversity of secondary education.

But Mr Cameron remained imprisoned by the social values of the Sixties and, like Tony Blair before him, sometimes preferred to reform where he should have rebuilt. Mrs May will, presumably, move as cautiously as her instinctive conservatism dictates. But early signs suggest that she is prepared to challenge the status quo. If she succeeds – and we urge her to lift all restrictions on new grammars as soon as possible – then she will be rewarded by the voters. People want the best for their children, and grammars offer bright pupils the best chance to get ahead.