The Green Party has joined Labour and the Liberals to fight the government’s new plans to re-introduce the grammar school system in the UK.
New PM May is assumed to be hoping to scrap the ban on establishing new grammar schools in England; she hopes it will actually help to increase social mobility. However, many other think it will actually create an even more unfair education system.
At the moment there are around 163 grammar schools in England and around three thousand state secondaries. The concern was that children who failed the test aged between ten and eleven are effectively cut off from their peers for the remainder of their school education.
The fear is it will brand many children as failures and will leave a generation of young people cut off from many top jobs, with no possibility of being able to reach these senior positions.
In the past Justine Greening, Education Sec, has indicated she is open minded on the issue of grammar school re-introduction.
Labour brought in a law back in 1998 to ensure no new grammar schools would be allowed to be established in England.
It is thought that selective schools will only benefit children from better off homes at the expense of the more disadvantaged households.
Vix Lowthion, Green Party spokesperson for Education, said: “Selective schools would condemn the vast majority of our 11-year-olds to feeling like they are academic failures before their high school career has even begun.”
Her thoughts were echoed by Natalie Bennett, Green Party leader who said said: “I speak in many schools, universities and colleges, and I know that young people feel failed by a system that prepares them for exams, not life, and that is being increasingly scarred by cuts to funding for essential provision.”
Many teachers have worries about the plans, which may prove more divisive than the free schools championed by Michael Gove. Ms Lowthion, a secondary school teacher on the Isle of Wight, added:“Selective schools would condemn the vast majority of our 11-year-olds to feeling like they are academic failures before their high school career has even begun.
“Grammar schools are not the solution. High expectations and the best education for every single child is what education policy must be.”