Petition calls on High Peak MP to say '˜no' to bringing back grammar schools

Labour Party members preparing to hand over the petition.

Representatives from branches of High Peak Labour Party handed over the petition to the Conservative MP during a surgery in Hayfield on November 26.

It contained over 600 signatures from local people, which were collected in the space of two hours following street stalls in Buxton, Whaley Bridge, New Mills and Glossop.

Becki Woods, the Labour Party’s High Peak Campaign Co-ordinator, said: “We call on our MP, Andrew Bingham, to say no to bringing back grammar schools - all school children should be given the opportunity to flourish and be the best they can, not just a chosen few.”

Ruth George, a member of the party’s Whaley Bridge branch, added: “If people thought about what happens to the other children, who do not get in to the grammar schools, they would realise we are also facing the return of secondary modern schools.

“Why go back to the past when there is not one argument produced by the government to explain the benefits?

“What our children need is for every school to be the best it can for all children.”