Ban on new grammar schools is ‘just writing children off’

A NEW wave of grammar schools should be created to give parents more choice, according to a key adviser leading the Government’s education reforms.

Nick Timothy – director of the New Schools Network, the governmentfunded charity that supports groups setting up “free schools” – said the law banning further academic selection in state schools was “arbitrary” and should be scrapped. Mr Timothy told The Sunday Tele

graph that the 1998 law preventing an expansion of academic selection was denying many parents the right to choose the most appropriate state education for their children.

He said: “I don’t believe in limiting the number of good schools. Ultimately, it is about standing up and saying this culture of low expectations that has been there for years in certain parts of the country has to end.

“We are just writing children off and it is immoral. That, to me, is the simple truth behind school reform.”

Mr Timothy said he believed there should be “a market with great diversity”, more choice for parents and competition between schools. He added: “Where parents want some selective schools, I don’t really see why we have a fairly arbitrary rule saying they can’t open them.

“This isn’t an argument for a full-on return to a selective system of grammars and secondary moderns.

“If you have got an incredibly diverse market of school providers in a particular county or city, then I think it’s arbitrary to say there shouldn’t be a new selective school, if that’s what parental demand suggests should happen.”

England’s 163 remaining grammars are among the most successful schools for exam results. Last month, Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, granted permission for the Weald of Kent girls’ grammar school in Tonbridge to build a “satellite” campus nine miles away, in Sevenoaks.

Mr Timothy, previously chief of staff to Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said: “I grew up in a working-class part of Birmingham and happened to be lucky enough to go to a grammar school. Going to a good school changed my life.”

The New Schools Network receives funding to support parents, teachers, charities and groups that want to set up a “free school” in their areas. Around 300 free schools have been opened in England since 2010. They can design their own curriculums and timetables and are not controlled by councils.

Ministers have promised to create at least 500 more free schools over the next five years, with 270,000 school places for children across the country.

Mr Timothy added that while councils were becoming more receptive to the policy, “lots of local authorities are very hostile to free schools”.