This report should serve as a warning that plans to re-introduce selection at 11 will only make the attainment gap wider - Rayner

Angela Rayner MP, Shadow Education Secretary, commenting on the Sutton Trust report into the attainment gap between poor pupils and their better-off classmates, said:

“This report should serve as a stark warning to the Government that their plans to re-introduce selection at 11 will only make this attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers even wider. 

“Their plans to bring back grammar schools are reckless and without evidence. Introducing wholesale selection back into the schools system will only make life more difficult for the most disadvantaged kids.” 

ENDS

Notes to editors:

• ·         ‘Three year attainment gap between poor pupils and their better-off classmates separates Britain’s brightest teenage girls’, Sutton Trust, 9^th February 2017, http://www.suttontrust.com/newsarchive/three-year-attainment-gap-between-poor-pupils-and-their-better-off-classmates-separates-britains-brightest-teenage-girls/