Angela Rayner MP, Shadow Education Secretary, commenting on Sir Michael Wilshaw’s comments on the return of Grammar Schools, said:

“This is an embarrassing rebuke for the Tories and their obsession with grammar schools.

“The Tories should be concentrating instead on raising standards in all schools and improving education for all our children, regardless of their backgrounds. They are failing to do so. But they want to return to a system in which children were branded as failures at the age of 11 and which only increased division in our society.

"Theresa May’s Tories have overseen a school places crisis, the highest rate of teachers leaving the profession in a decade and over half a million pupils in super-sized classes. These are the issues which should be her priority, not harking back to a golden-age that never existed.”

Ends

Notes to Editors

Ofsted’s Chief Inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, made the comments at the London Councils education summit in central London:

“The notion that the poor stand to benefit from the return of grammar schools strikes me as quite palpable tosh and nonsense – and is very clearly refuted by the London experience.”

Sir Michael Wilshaw, London Councils education summit, 5th September 2016, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/sir-michael-wilshaws-speech-at-the-london-councils-education-summit