UK Education Reforms Spark Debate on Class and the Classroom

Jarlath O'Brien, headteacher at Carwarden House Community School, a special academy in Surrey, reacting on Twitter said it was "sad, infuriating, but entirely predictable".

The prime minister's speech on education on Friday drew fire over her plan to overturn decades of policy consensus by allowing the expansion of grammar schools, which select pupils on ability.

But the make-up of May's cabinet - 20 members went to state schools and around six of those were grammar schools, including the prime minister's school - may have brought the proposed education reform back into the foreground.

Under other proposals, rules stopping faith schools from selecting more than 50% of pupils on the basis of religion will also be relaxed.

"I want to see children from ordinary, working class families given the chances their richer contemporaries take for granted", May concluded.

"This is the plan to. set Britain on [that] path".

Selective education supporters often point to the list of high-achievers who were taught at grammar schools, including Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Margaret Thatcher, Anthony Hopkins, David Attenborough and Alan Bennett.

"I do think that academic excellence is important".

"My only concern about our policy is to ensure that we do not create another batch of second class schools, [but] I'm sure we won't".

However many school and academy leaders were much less enthusiastic.

"By enshrining selection into our system the Prime Minister is wilfully ignoring the overwhelming evidence that it leads to a more unequal country".

Labour MP for Exeter, Ben Bradshaw, said ministers "should instead be focusing on driving up standards at all schools" instead of pushing selection. They require bold decisions and a lot of hard work, and no doubt there will be opposition to overcome.

Teesside - like the rest of the country - was once home to grammar schools such as Acklam Hall Grammar, Cleveland Grammar in Redcar and Grangefield Grammar School, in Stockton.

The two opposition parties lack strength in the Commons, but outnumber Tories in the House of Lords.

"The Liberal Democrats are the party of education".

"There are many, many more pressing problems for education like school places, improving vocational education and reversing the funding cuts about to hit schools".

There is also strong dissent from teachers' unions.

"These proposals are a distraction from the very real issues facing our schools", he said.

"Bourne Grammar School is going to expand to 1700 pupils and the grammar school in Spalding has pupils which travel from as far away as March in Cambridgeshire".

Hailing his successor's "clear moral purpose" in seeking to raise school standards, Gove praised plans to encourage private schools and universities to offer more help to state schools. And it's a past which all the evidence shows was hugely damaging for both inequality and social mobility.

Theresa May has announced the biggest overhaul of British education for half a century, promising to create "a great meritocracy" in post-Brexit Britain. This could involve taking a proportion of pupils from lower-income background or opening a "feeder" primary school in disadvantaged areas.

No new grammar schools have been built in England since 1968. It is also argued that neighbouring schools inevitably suffer. Their future won't be decided forever at the age of 11.

However, he was notably silent on grammars and ended his address by urging Greening to "be driven entirely by data and what works", a pointed appeal given the majority of studies on grammar schools suggest they do not help social mobility - a finding reiterated on Tuesday in a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. "[But] there are some wonderful, wonderful state schools, with outstanding results and outstanding teachers and we should be looking at that concept rather than the label of a school", he says.