(IN response to: Cllr Hyman "Our selective system is vastly superior to Labour’s ‘one size fits all’ comprehensive solution').

I’M really proud that our schools in Trafford perform well. But that’s down to strong leadership and excellent teaching, not selection.

I know schools are obliged to admit children with a named school on their Statement of SEN or EHCP. Yet all the evidence shows that the selective system works against SEN children.

Based on the latest school census figures, Trafford had a grammar school population of 7,539 children, just 224 of whom were receiving SEN support, and just 20 had education, health and care plans or statements.

Disturbingly, the Government’s Green Paper proposing more grammar schools makes no mention of SEN children at all. That’s why I stood up in Parliament this week to share the harsh reality of the selective education system in Trafford for children with SEN.

But it’s not just children with SEN who are losing out. From speaking to local teachers and headteachers, I’ve heard a selective system clearly doesn’t work for the majority of our children.

Children, sometimes as young as 10-years-old, are told "you are a failure” on the basis of one exam, allowing them to enter secondary education dispirited and demoralised, which leaves non-selective schools with the job of rebuilding their confidence. They do a great job of this and children from these schools go on to perform very well. But why give non-selective schools this challenge in the first place?

If we have a system in which only one in four of our children, aged ten and 11, are told they are successful and have potential, we are getting something very wrong.

Of those who do pass the exam, the reality in Trafford is that the poorer the child, the less likely they will go to grammar school. Evidence shows that a tiny proportion of children in poorer wards, like Clifford and Bucklow St Martins, get in to grammar school compared with a much higher percentage of children from Hale and Bowdon, in the richer parts of the borough.

And in Trafford, around three per cent of children in grammar schools are on free school meals, compared with a borough-wide average of 11 or 12 per cent.

Trafford Tories defending selection are ignoring the hard evidence about a system which may work for a lucky few children in their wards but is rigged against the majority of children in my community.

Kate Green, MP for Stretford and Urmston