Theresa May has no mandate to expand the elitist grammar school system – she will live to regret it

The expanded grammar schools will cream off funding from the rest of the hard pressed education budget, skim the most able pupils from the other schools, and demoralise and degrade the quality of the remaining, less-privileged academies and schools

(REUTERS)

It would be a fine question to set in an admission test for a selective school: “Explain the difference between a new grammar school and an annexe of an existing school some 10 miles away.” Additional marks could be awarded for clear English; attempts at political spin would render the essay automatically invalid.

Sadly the new education secretary, Damian Hinds, would fail such an entrance exam. That’s because the main difference between allowing existing grammar schools to expand on different sites, sometimes far away from the “mother” school, and a new school is political rather than educational. It makes little practical difference to the teachers, pupils or parents lucky enough to enjoy this privileged educational status, though there might be some savings on administrative overheads.

And privilege is precisely what this is about. During what feels like a political eternity ago – in reality only 18 months – when Theresa May was the apparently all conquering power in the land, she promised to expand opportunity by creating a new generation of grammar schools. These, it was promised, would transform the lives of poorer but bright children across the land.

Many thought that we had heard the last of such plans when Ms May called her disastrous snap election and lost her majority. But no, although the establishment of entirely new schools has indeed been abandoned, the expansion of existing institutions into new neighbourhoods will have precisely the same impact – and a damaging one for the great majority of children who will never be able to take up a place.

As with Ms May’s original scheme, the expanded grammar schools will cream off funding from the rest of the hard pressed education budget, skim the most able pupils from the other schools, and demoralise and degrade the quality of the remaining, less privileged academies and schools.

The truth is that grammar schools have always represented a ladder of opportunity – but only for a lucky minority, most of whom coming from better off backgrounds, and a few whose parents would probably be able to afford private education in any case. They were, and are, a middle class racket. In a country where social mobility has declined alarmingly in recent decades it is a badly retrograde step to re-energise the grammar school sector in this way.

The government suggests that it will encourage or even force the expanding grammar schools to recruit a proportion of their pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, but it is an unconvincing claim, and one that tacitly acknowledges the bias towards the middle classes inherent in any selective educational system. At best it would merely mean that a slightly larger minority of Britain’s young people will be gifted an unfair advantage in life. That is not good enough.

As if the expansion of the grammar schools, for which there is no mandate, were not dispiriting enough, the proposal to loosen the admission rules on new faith schools adds a dangerously sectarian dimension to these reforms. While the cap of 50 per cent of places going to any given religious group remains in place for existing faith schools, new “voluntary” schools will be allowed to take all of their pupils from a certain faith. Such is the nature of religious affiliation that this will inevitably lead to racially segregated schools – as matter of policy rather than geographical accident – and will further separate minority groups from each other and from the rest of the population.

Nor are these new faith schools genuinely “voluntary” as they will receive substantial state aid towards their foundation. Again, this is a policy that will have a devastating effect on social cohesion and educational opportunity in the long run, and especially if these faith schools are permitted to be academically selective as well – a toxic combination of the worst of all educational worlds.

The prime minister, then, is as determined as ever to pursue her pet grammar schools policy, for which she lost her education secretary, Justine Greening, in January. However, she lacks any political mandate to do so, and there are many progressive and sensible figures at all levels in her own party – including former education secretaries Ms Greening, Nicky Morgan and Michael Gove – who have publicly expressed their doubts about the wisdom of her policy. In due course she may find that her attempt to spin new grammar schools and faith schools as mere extensions of existing policy and as powerful engines of social mobility will fail. Ms May needs to do her homework.