For the first time in half a century, a new grammar school will open. Officially the 450-pupil site opening in Sevenoaks is an annex of the Weald of Kent Grammar School in Tonbridge, but the two sites are nine miles away. “It is difficult to say an umbilical cord nine miles long can be seen as part of a parent school and not as a new school,” Bob MacCartney, chairman of the National Grammar Schools Association and a huge advocate of grammars, recently admitted.
It might not be the last new grammar school to open. While Nicky Morgan has denied any intention to scrap the law passed in 1998 that forbids new grammar schools, other grammars will be encouraged to try and get new sites approved. And, regardless, the number of pupils at grammars has been going up on the sly: 33,000 more students go to grammar schools now than in 1998 (as I recently noted for the Economist). A higher proportion of pupils in England and Wales go to grammars than at any point since 1978.
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