Theresa May spoke encouragingly about the deep inequality that still pervades our society as she launched what proved to be an unnecessary leadership campaign. As Prime Minister she’s taken the rhetoric a stage further, announcing a government audit, whatever that may be. But incongruously—and in my view, incredibly—she has told her MPs that, as part of this agenda, that she wants to see a re-birth of the grammar school.
Given the weight of evidence demonstrating the damage done by selective education, it’s rather like a new Health Secretary announcing that the NHS must go back to applying leeches. The proportion of poor children in grammars is vanishingly small; several English counties that retain selection have an especially marked class gap in GCSEs; and, the OECD’s number crunchers have looked round the world and concluded that early selection retards social mobility.