Schools that work for Everyone

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

It needs to sit alongside the Government’s existing push on improving vocational education, improving young people’s chances to get work experience, and bringing forward 3 million apprenticeships. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to reflect on the fact that although many children will do A-levels and go on into our university system, with a higher proportion and absolute number than ever before now coming from disadvantaged families, many young people will not follow that route. We have to make sure that the vocational route can really deliver for them too.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

In Lincolnshire we already have grammar schools. With about a third of pupils going to them, many from deprived backgrounds, it is clear that in the right ecosystem grammar schools can be a real engine for social mobility. Will the Secretary of State also bear in mind the contribution that is made by secondary modern schools in the 21st century—schools such as Giles Academy which have evolved to make sure that the right education is provided for the right pupils in a genuinely diverse ecosystem? If we get this right, we can produce schools that make sure that every pupil gets the education they deserve. May I invite her to come to the National Association of Secondary Moderns’ reception in the House of Commons, as her predecessor did, to pay tribute to the excellent work that goes on in those schools?

[Justine Greening]

I look forward to getting a chance to meet the organisation that my hon. Friend mentions. I reiterate his point, which is that we see grammars operating in parts of the country not to the detriment of the broader school community. This is not, as we saw in the past, a binary system with outstanding grammars and, by contrast, other schools—the 1950s and ’60s secondary moderns—that were not even testing the children that came through their doors, let alone really driving attainment. We are in a very different place now, with a much wider, more diverse system, but that is why we are also right to start opening it up.