TORY PM Theresa May yesterday unveiled plans, despite all denials, to drive education back to the 1940s by allowing any school to become a ‘selective’ grammar school.
In a speech given in London, she announced the new Tory drive to reverse the ban on grammar schools expanding and new ones opening. It emerged during her speech that, not only will her policy lead to segregating children by social class, it will also divide children along religious lines as well.
May began by outlining four points to help those left behind by the selection process.
Firstly, to help those pupils left behind by grammar school selection, universities will charge students higher fees to sponsor underperforming schools in their local area, making fee paying students pay for her education ‘reforms’. Secondly she said that she wants to ‘remove the obstacles which stop good faith schools opening.’
Currently when any ‘faith school’ is oversubscribed it must comprise of 50% of children who do not hold that faith, for an example, a Catholic school has to, by law, include 50% of children of other religions and atheists. She announced plans to allow faith schools to be entirely made up of children of one religion.
Singling out Catholicism she said: ‘We will remove this 50% rule to allow Catholic schools to flourish and give everything they have to offer.’ This was condemned in Northern Ireland as a plan to strengthen sectarianism by having 100% Catholic or Protestant or Muslim schools.
Thirdly she said she wants to encourage private schools to sponsor and lord it over state schools in their area by giving super-rich private school governors the right to take over the running of local academy chains and free schools. Point Four was on new grammar schools and allowing unlimited expansion.
She said: ‘There is one final area that we have placed obstacles in the way of developing good new schools. . . so I want to relax the restrictions which stop selective schools from expanding. The principle is clear – selective schools have a part in our education system, so the government will make millions available to expand.’
None of May’s new Tory Party policy was in the Tory Party election manifesto.
Not only was May’s new plan for resurrecting grammar schools not voted for, but she, herself, was not voted in to become Prime Minister, but installed by dictat.
Despite not a word about reintroducing grammar schools appearing in the 2012 Tory Party Manifesto, Labour has refused to call for a general election. Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of teachers union ATL, declared: ‘Is Theresa May serious about returning to the days of labelling children failures at age 11?
‘The blight caused by academic selection at age 11 affects children’s self-worth, ambition and confidence and can last a lifetime. If she chooses to pursue this course of action, Theresa May will break her promise to make “Britain a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few”.
‘Pupil selection has been tried and tested, the debate has already happened and the evidence could not be clearer, grammar schools entrench inequality leaving the poorest and most vulnerable behind. In nearly all of the 164 grammar schools, fewer than 10% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, in 98 it is fewer than 3% and in 21 fewer than 1%.
‘This entrenched disadvantage continues through life. The average hourly wage difference between the richest 10% and the poorest 10% of earners in grammar school areas is over £4 more than in non-selective areas. And does the PM seriously think that wealthier parents won’t pay to have their children extensively coached to get into grammar schools?
‘Theresa May must be living in an alternate reality. Our education system is currently facing unprecedented strain, reeling under a barrage of crises. We have children without school places; classrooms without teachers; schools and colleges struggling to operate in a financial strait jacket; assessment, curriculum and qualification reforms disintegrating; and more children and young people than ever before suffering from mental health problems.
‘In this context, and in the face of universal opposition from teachers, academics, Ofsted’s Chief Inspector and many of her own MPs, Theresa May plans to reintroduce unnecessary and potentially damaging selection policies.’
