Greening: New grammar schools will not be compulsory

Ms Greening argued grammar school policy could not be “frozen” amid further evidence of signficant disquiet on the Government’s own benches about the proposal.

The Education Secretary was forced onto the defensive by Tory MP Michelle Donelan as she was grilled over the plans today.

The Kent MP raised concerns over the tutoring of middle class children to pass the 11-plus and the “lack of evidence” that grammars help social mobility.

Mrs Donelan said testing children at 11 risked “segregating a child that’s going to win a nobel prize in science and they might not pass an 11-plus”.

Ms Greening said: “We’ve really frozen grammar schools policy literally for decades and it’s now time to say we are where we are but how do we take this forward?

“Grammars can play a role in driving social mobility so what’s that going to take and shouldn’t we give parents more choice at the same time if that’s the kind of school they want to send their child to.”

Ms Greening said “practical issues” should not be an obstacle to looking at the role grammars could play and many of the objections were based on a view of schools from “40 or 50 years ago”.

She added: “It is about what parents want and it is about choice it’s not about us saying that communities that don’t want grammars should have them.

“It’s about saying at the moment there is not enough parent choice and we should be prepared to meet that.”

The row over grammar schools also surfaced in the Commons chamber as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the Prime Minister of proposing “failed segregation for the few and second-class schooling for the many”.

Mr Corbyn pointed to Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw’s description of the suggestion a move back to grammars could help poorer children as “palpable tosh and nonsense”.

He challenged Mrs May to name an expert who backed her proposals and highlighted her predecessor’s opposition to grammar expansion.

The Labour leader said: “Isn’t all this proof that the Conservative Party’s green paper addresses none of the actual crises facing our schools system - a real terms cut in school budgets, half a million pupils in super-size classes, a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, a rising number of unqualified teachers in classrooms, vital teaching assistants losing their jobs?”

The Prime Minister pointed out both she and Mr Corbyn had attended grammar schools and said Labour wanted “take the advantages of a good education for themselves and pull up the ladder behind them for other people”.

Mrs May added: “You have opposed measures that increase parental choice, that increase the freedom for headteachers to run their schools, you’ve opposed the opportunity for people to set up the free schools - these are all changes that are leading to improvements in our education system and we will build on those with our new policies.”

Speaking later, Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron urged Conservative backbenchers to work “across party lines to stop this divisive policy”.

He added: “We can deliver an education policy that works for everyone. This grammar schools policy does not deliver that and is deeply regressive.”