Theresa May is planning to launch a new generation of grammar schools by lifting the 20 year ban on them. However she has been warned she will face stiff opposition to plans for new grammar schools from some senior Tory MPs as well as Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
More than 100 Tory MPs are said to support the campaign but critics of grammar schools immediately rejected the idea that they encourage social mobility, with the shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, accusing the prime minister of “harking back to a mythical ‘golden age’”.
“Selection belongs in the dustbin of history and has no place in modern society. There must be no going back,” she said.
Grammar schools are state secondaries whose pupils are selected by examination at age 10 to 11.
There are currently about 163 in England - out of some 3,000 state secondaries - and a further 69 in Northern Ireland.
But under a law created by the Labour government in 1998, no new grammar schools were allowed to open in England. Education policy is devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
