The prime minister has said he is not opposed to creating new selective state schools because “competition is a damn fine thing”.
In an interview with LBC, Boris Johnson was asked about the support for setting up new grammar schools among MPs in red wall constituencies.
He said: “Look, I’ve always been in favour of academic competition and many schools now have policies of selective admission in sixth forms . . . I’m not against that in principle. All I would say is that what I want is good schools everywhere.”
He added: “I think that competition is a damn fine thing and very important and leads to excellence, and provided . . . you encourage competition in a way that doesn’t make everybody who fails feel totally miserable, you’ll get some pretty good results.”
Last week Johnson said he had “never been against academic selection” and that “you need to look at how you do it”.
Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary, has also said he wants to “spread the DNA” of grammar schools through the system, with grammar schools joining a “family of multi-academy trusts” while retaining their selective status.
The Labour Party banned the creation of new grammar schools more than 20 years ago.
The idea of opening new grammar schools has support in the Conservative Party.
Jonathan Gullis, an MP and former teacher who sits on the Commons education select committee, is running a campaign to reverse the ban.
Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, also wants to see the rule overturned and is set to table an amendment to the Schools Bill in an attempt to bring about the change.
The government has removed large sections of its Schools Bill after concerns were raised in the House of Lords that the bill would undermine academies’ autonomy.
In a letter to the Lords, the academies minister Baroness Barran said that the government would be removing sections of the bill that would have introduced new standards that all academies would need to follow, as well as extending the laws for maintained schools to academies.
Peers had warned the amendments were “draconian” and would have give the Department for Education much more power to intervene in how academies were run.
Head teachers praised the development and said that the proposals had been a “power grab” from Whitehall to centralise control over academies.
A Department for Education spokesman said it remained committed to its proposals and would be revising the passages.
Nice little cost reduction for the middle class that would send their kids to private school. Keep sticking it to the elites guys you’ll get there one day.
Good job he went to a public school because he would have got no where if he had met any competition.
_”In principle” – lost me there._ Competition is so fine Johnson attempted to root it at the work party.
He must’ve misheard the question as “more Abba schools?”
The Tories love competition as it means they can use it to divide people and create tension/conflict.
Stop presses: Conservatives think that yet another problem can be solved by market forces. I swear we could be under attack by aliens and the Conservatives would be proposing a market based approach…
I’m sure Putin whole heartedly agrees with Boris that ‘competition is a fine thing’ – ie Ukraine
Our government is full of men who don’t know the meaning of fair competition because their parents have bought everything for them.
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by Emma Yeomans
The prime minister has said he is not opposed to creating new selective state schools because “competition is a damn fine thing”.
In an interview with LBC, Boris Johnson was asked about the support for setting up new grammar schools among MPs in red wall constituencies.
He said: “Look, I’ve always been in favour of academic competition and many schools now have policies of selective admission in sixth forms . . . I’m not against that in principle. All I would say is that what I want is good schools everywhere.”
He added: “I think that competition is a damn fine thing and very important and leads to excellence, and provided . . . you encourage competition in a way that doesn’t make everybody who fails feel totally miserable, you’ll get some pretty good results.”
Last week Johnson said he had “never been against academic selection” and that “you need to look at how you do it”.
Nadhim Zahawi, the education secretary, has also said he wants to “spread the DNA” of grammar schools through the system, with grammar schools joining a “family of multi-academy trusts” while retaining their selective status.
The Labour Party banned the creation of new grammar schools more than 20 years ago.
The idea of opening new grammar schools has support in the Conservative Party.
Jonathan Gullis, an MP and former teacher who sits on the Commons education select committee, is running a campaign to reverse the ban.
Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, also wants to see the rule overturned and is set to table an amendment to the Schools Bill in an attempt to bring about the change.
The government has removed large sections of its Schools Bill after concerns were raised in the House of Lords that the bill would undermine academies’ autonomy.
In a letter to the Lords, the academies minister Baroness Barran said that the government would be removing sections of the bill that would have introduced new standards that all academies would need to follow, as well as extending the laws for maintained schools to academies.
Peers had warned the amendments were “draconian” and would have give the Department for Education much more power to intervene in how academies were run.
Head teachers praised the development and said that the proposals had been a “power grab” from Whitehall to centralise control over academies.
A Department for Education spokesman said it remained committed to its proposals and would be revising the passages.
Nice little cost reduction for the middle class that would send their kids to private school. Keep sticking it to the elites guys you’ll get there one day.
Good job he went to a public school because he would have got no where if he had met any competition.
_”In principle” – lost me there._ Competition is so fine Johnson attempted to root it at the work party.
He must’ve misheard the question as “more Abba schools?”
The Tories love competition as it means they can use it to divide people and create tension/conflict.
Stop presses: Conservatives think that yet another problem can be solved by market forces. I swear we could be under attack by aliens and the Conservatives would be proposing a market based approach…
I’m sure Putin whole heartedly agrees with Boris that ‘competition is a fine thing’ – ie Ukraine
Our government is full of men who don’t know the meaning of fair competition because their parents have bought everything for them.