Grammar schools

Controversial Conservative manifesto plans to expand grammar schools were quickly dropped after the last election. But now the government has found an extra £50m to enable grammar schools in England to fund places for disadvantaged children.

Liberal Democrat education spokesperson, Layla Moran, used to work as a maths and physics teacher in Brussels and London.

England’s schools should be open to all – and help students from ‘ordinary working families’ – the education secretary Justine Greening has said today. She insists a new generation of grammar schools will do more to attract pupils from less affluent backgrounds.

Laura McInerney, a former teacher and the editor of Schools Week, and Toby Young, the journalist and director of the New Schools Network, a charity for groups wanting to set up free schools.

The Government is to make £320m pounds available to fund 140 new free schools in England. And that could pave the way for some of the new schools to become selective grammar schools.

Teaching unions say that 98 per cent of schools in England will lose out from the new national funding formula announced before Christmas.

As he steps down as head of Ofsted, Cathy Newman has been speaking to Sir Michael Wilshaw.