Toby Young: Government should scrap 11-plus for new grammar schools

The Government should scrap the 11-plus test to determine which children go to grammar schools – or force all pupils to take it – if it wants to improve social mobility, according to one of the Department for Education’s main champions for new schools.

Toby Young, the director of the New Schools Network (NSN), which plays a key role in delivering free schools and grammars, said the decision for which children go to grammar schools could be handed over to primary headteachers. Simply letting existing selective schools replicate themselves as they are will do nothing to improve social mobility, he added.

Speaking exclusively to The Independent, Mr Young said he believed “no more than five” grammar schools would open by the end of the current Government. Read more