New grammar schools could open in the next three years

The first new grammar schools could be rolled out in England by 2020, according to the Grammar Schools Head’s Association.

Following a meeting with the education secretary, the association revealed in their spring newsletter that they had met with executive officers for a roundtable discussion regarding “lifting the ban on grammar schools”.

Schools minister Nick Gibb and education secretary Justine Greening were also in attendance, where they met a new team at the Department for Education (DfE), which was comprised of the prime minister’s joint chief of staff Nick Timothy and Josephine Howarth.

According to the document, new selective schools are likely to be opened as free schools and could potentially enrol students in 2020.

It also states that the government are thinking about a selection test in order to address “test tourism” and want to work with the grammar schools and test providers on “further developing coaching-resistant tests”.

In addition to this, it revealed that the government still wants to see the “top 25 per cent pupils” in comprehensive schools, with the new selective schools having a smaller ability range of “more like top 10 per cent”.

The newsletter also added that Greening believed the response to the consultation over grammar schools, which closed in December, was not “an overwhelming flood of negativity”.