Ben Kerrigan-
Education Secretary, Justine Greening, says the government will take a pragmatic look at new grammar schools, but will not be going back to the past. Greening wants to offer parents choice, without splitting children into “winners and losers”.
In response to criticism from Labour that the government was showing a “dangerous misunderstanding” of issues facing schools in England, the education secretary said she recognized the debate over grammar schools was “emotive”, adding that government plans would be set out “in due course”.
She emphasized that “there will be no return to the simplistic binary choice of the past where schools split children into winners and losers, successes and failures,” she promised.
However, whilst admitting that election can “play a role” in the education system, and while grammar schools can provide a “stretching, outstanding education”, they are only part of a “very broad-based school system, she insisted.
Whether children are winners or losers is ultimately down to parents and the children themselves. No solid or genuine system of education can guarantee winners for every student. It will be pretentious to think a solid education system can guarantee winners in every student. What it should be expected to do is set high standards that compel all students to work hard and aim for high standards.
Greater teacher support should be available to everyone, but those who fail to pull their weight should be expected to suffer the consequences.
The introduction of grammar schools will necessarily overrule the 1998 Education Act which stipulates a rule not to create further grammar schools.
The consultation paper will propose for schools to dedicate a quota of places to children from poorer backgrounds.On Wednesday evening Prime Minister Theresa May told Conservative MP’s she wanted “an element of selection” in the education system, but that new grammar schools would not be forced on areas that did not want them.
May is right, because selection based on academic performance ensures that schools have only serious and committed students who understand the value of sacrifice, and who are not in school to mess about and constitute a nuisance to those who are more ambitious.