MILLIONS of kids from poor families will be left behind by Theresa May’s grammar schools revival, the PM’s social mobility tsar has warned.
Alan Milburn says the upheaval will fail to boost classroom standards –and could wreck her mission to build a Britain that works for everyone.
In a hard-hitting report, he predicts a return to selection will only create more divisions in society.
He said that while the brightest pupils may do marginally better in a grammar school, the poorest children will be left further behind.
Mr Milburn’s criticism is a heavy blow to the PM who has put grammar schools at the heart of her flagship drive to improve the life chances of low-income families.
It comes a week after Chief Schools Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw branded the move a “backward” step that would create more inequality.
His report says the government risks taking its eye off the ball on what really matters when it comes to improving social mobility.
More effort should be put into producing “great teachers” and raising expectations, he said, rather than creating new breeds of schools.
The former Labour minister argues that while academies have produced top results they also some of the worst.
Mr Milburn said: “For too long, successive governments have focused on reforming school structures with mixed results for social mobility and educational standards.
“Making all schools academies and introducing new grammar schools will not address the fundamental problems that divide our school system.
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“The government needs to rethink its plans for more grammar schools which risk creating more divisions in our society, not less.”
The Social Mobility Commission chairman raises the alarm in his annual state of the nation report, due out next week.
It brands new grammar schools a “distraction” that will not help the 240,000 teenagers who leave school every year without five good GCSEs.
Most of those who pass the 11-plus are from middle-class families, it claims.
Just 2.8 per cent of pupils at Kent’s grammar schools are poor enough to get free school meals, compared with 13.4 per cent at non-selective schools in the county.
The report hails the PM’s commitment to improving social mobility but stresses that progress will rely on tackling unequal access to high-quality schools.
It says: “The focus on grammar schools…is, at best, a distraction and, at worse, a risk to efforts aimed at narrowing the significant social and geographical divides in education that bedevil England’s school system.
“The commission is not clear how the creation of new grammar schools will make a significant positive contribution to improving social mobility.”
It adds: “Without fairer access to high-quality teaching, the government’s wider efforts will continue to have limited success.
“The top priority must be to ensure that teaching is an attractive profession to top candidates and that the best teachers go to the schools that need them most.”