Comment by Rt Hon. Alan Milburn, Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, on the Education Secretary's speech on Grammar Schools

In response to the Education Secretary's statement today saying that she wants new grammar schools to create opportunities for children from "ordinary working families", the Chair of the Social Mobility Commission Alan Milburn said:

"The Commission welcomes the fact that the Government wants the education system to work for ordinary working families, but it remains very unclear how new grammar schools will be more socially representative.  The focus on grammar schools is, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a risk to efforts aimed at narrowing the significant social and geographical divides in educational attainment that bedevil England’s school system. As they stand, these proposals will not address the fundamental problems that divide our school system and may well create further divisions. The Commission’s greatest concern is that the positive gains for the few that attend a grammar school are and will be outweighed by the negative effects for the majority of children in selective areas that go to other schools. The Commission hopes that the Government will move on from an over-reliance on structural reform to a new focus on improving teacher quality and fairly distributing teachers to the schools that most need them."