May: I will not back down on grammars

Defiant PM says state system already has selection ... by house price

THERESA May vowed to introduce new grammar schools last night after declaring that England’s state education system amounted to ‘selection by house prices’.

The Prime Minister said too many children were missing out on ‘quality education’, and vowed to face down a threat by unelected peers to kill off her plans.

She also insisted that opening grammars did not amount to ‘going back to the past’.

No 10 was hit by a tide of criticism yesterday after details of plans for a wave of grammar schools leaked out accidentally.

Labour and the LibDems said they would block the ‘alarming’ legislation in the House of Lords, on the grounds that any form of selection would disadvantage poorer pupils, while Education Department officials want her to focus on expanding existing schools.

But in a defiant appearance before the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs last night, the PM made it plain that she would not be backing down. Full proposals for what she called a ‘21st century education system with an element of selection’ are now expected to be published within days.

She said: ‘Selection already exists in State schools. It’s called selection by house price.’

The remark refers to the fact that house prices are inflated close to the best performing State schools, pricing out less well-off children. By contrast, supporters say pupils get into grammar schools on merit alone.

The latest research by Lloyds bank shows that many parents are willing to pay an average of £53,000 extra to secure homes close to schools with the best academic results – a 31 per cent increase on last year.

Average house prices have now reached £366,744 in the catchment areas surrounding England’s top 30 State schools, compared with an average of £313,318 elsewhere.

Mrs May’s aides claimed she was determined to help those who work hard but can’t get their children into good schools.

They said grammar schools had been shown to work and that maintaining an arbitrary ban on them made no sense. Initially, the grammar schools are likely to be targeted at typical working- class areas, including on the outskirts of big cities such as Birmingham.

Admission tests will be overhauled to make it harder for wealthier parents to coach their children to get the highest marks.

But the Government’s social mobility tsar warned that expanding the grammar school system would be ‘a disaster’.

Alan Milburn, the former Labour Cabinet minister who now chairs the Government’s Social Mobility Commission, said it risked creating an ‘us and them divide’. Officials in the Department for Education are also resisting the scale and pace and some of the reforms, which have caused a split in the Cabinet.

A document signed by the department’s most senior civil servant that was photographed being carried into No10 said Education Secretary Justine Greening’s ‘clear position’ was that they should only be approved once ministers have worked with existing selective schools to show that pupils who do not make the grade are not disadvantaged. She is said to only want new grammars to be listed in the forthcoming consultation docu- ment as an option. However, senior Government sources have made it clear that Mrs May is determined to forge ahead with the plans, regardless of the strength of opposition.

Tory MPs said she had left no doubt about her commitment to the idea. One told the Politico website that listening to Mrs May at the 1922 Committee was ‘like being addressed by the headmistress’.

Senior Tory sources believe the plans will clear the Commons with the support of Unionist parties. The roadblock is in the Lords, where the Government has no majority. LibDem peer Lord Storey said: ‘The Conservatives know if they bring forward any legislation for grammar schools we will block it in the Lords.’

Tory Peer Lord Willetts yesterday indicated that Mrs May will even face opposition from within her own party in the Lords.

A decade ago, as David Cameron’s education spokesman in the Commons, Lord Willetts persuaded the Tory leader to maintain Labour’s ban on grammars.

Yesterday he declared that he had not changed his view, and the evidence suggested they failed to help disadvantaged children.

He told the BBC: ‘If you look around the world at school systems we admire... they put their effort into raising standards for all kids.’

Stephen Glover – Page 17

‘An us and them divide’