article: It dramatically restarted a row over academic selection at the age of 11 which for almost 20 years had been quietly sidelined. The speech defining her vision of a "great meritocracy" was just last September, but those plans have been shredded by the election. So what has changed for England's 163 grammar schools and the many non-selective schools affected by them? On the surface apparently nothing, beneath that almost everything. Or, as one grammar school leader said to me "politically, grammar schools are now an issue in a way they weren't. The 1997 ban on new selective schools brought a truce. David Cameron respected that truce." The school of Theresa May's former chief of staff, Nick Timothy, has a special place in this story. King Edward VI Aston School looks like a bastion of tradition, but it's taken a radical step to become more inclusive. At Aston a quota system has been introduced to set aside 25% of places for pupil premium children who had passed the entrance test. This means their family income will have been low enough at some point in the last six years to entitle them to free school meals. Similar quota systems were widely expected to be part of any plans for new grammar schools, which overall have only 3% of pupils on free school meals. There was even the possibility they might have been applied to existing grammar schools. Aston is part of a foundation that runs six of Birmingham's grammar schools. Executive director Heath Monk thinks the ditched plans, guided by May's chief of staff, might have been more surprising than many realised. "Nick Timothy was unique in seeing the expansion of grammar schools, and making them more inclusive, as part of the same agenda." Grammar schools, quietly tolerated for years, found themselves in the spotlight. Our BBC investigation of admission policies showed fewer than half gave priority to poorer children when allocating places. This included some schools with poor neighbourhoods on their doorstep. A new law might have compelled grammar schools to change, but without that what will happen to efforts to make them socially inclusive? At the King Edward VI grammar schools Mr Monk says they hope to go significantly further than the current 20-25% quotas. The risk of slightly lower exam results down the road is one they can take as the foundation runs most of the grammar schools in Birmingham. About 5% of England's secondary school pupils are educated in a grammar school. The influence of selection is greater, because grammar schools only give places to about a quarter of the children in their areas. The other local schools accept children who don't reach the score needed, don't sit the test or have special needs. "We'll be back to the bad old days, where people didn't recognise we still had grammars and secondary moderns," Ian Widdows tells me. He's the head teacher at Giles Academy in Boston Lincolnshire, which he is proud to call a secondary modern. He set up the National Secondary Moderns Association to gain recognition that they do
summary: It was Theresa May's controversial big idea, to open a wave of new grammar schools in England.