EDUCATION Secretary Nicky Morgan’s decision to approve an “annexe” of Tonbridge-based Weald of Kent Grammar School seven miles away in Sevenoaks is a retrograde step.

It is clearly a new grammar school no matter the verbal gymnastics deployed to pretend the opposite.

The government had the option of seeking to repeal a measure passed by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1998 banning the creation of new grammars.

However, it chose to misuse a legislative loophole allowing grammar schools to expand in response to local demand by pretending that an existing school has simply been extended — seven miles away.

This is not simply a geographical issue. It is a matter of providing the best education opportunities for all children rather than dividing them at age 11 as more or less worthy of academic excellence.

Children develop at different rates and can switch sets in comprehensive schools to reflect this, but dividing them irrevocably at that tender age prevents such flexibility.

It perpetuates the myth that “intelligence” is a fixed quality that can be measured at 11, even though it is an open secret that better-off parents engage private tutors to coach their offspring to pass the 11-plus exam.

Parents who clamour for a return to grammar schools do so because they believe that their own children will gain an advantage from them.

But the history of selection of 11 — and a key reason why education professionals, parents and politicians turned against it — was that this division condemned most children as academic failures.

Retaining or extending grammar schools has the corollary of casting other schools in their area as secondary moderns, no matter what they are called.

Educationalist Michael Rosen points out that, from 1947-70, 1.8 million pupils from “relatively disadvantaged” families could be said to have gained from having a grammar school education.

But against this has to be weighed the effects on 7 million of their peers who were told that they had “failed” at age 11 and went to secondary modern schools.

It is not surprising that privately educated Tory Cabinet members should welcome divisions in the state sector, claiming that it assists equality of opportunity for children from poorer families.

These beneficiaries of inherited wealth like to couch the debate on education in terms of objective excellence when the real issue is equality.

Labour in government, while taking a generally positive stand against grammar schools, failed to take forward the comprehensive ethos previously espoused by the party by introducing league tables and backing “faith” schools, academies and other institutions designed to separate children by gender, religion and supposed academic ability.

This stance undermined the excellent work to advance comprehensive education undertaken by the Socialist Education Association and individuals such as Caroline Benn and Brian Simon.

Governments of whatever stripe ought to start listening to education professionals and their trade unions rather than deciding that they know better than people who dedicate their lives to teaching our children.

Preparing pupils for the rest of their lives is not cheap.

It requires investment across the board, not concentrated on taxpayer-subsidised private institutions or on schools that opt out of local authority democratic accountability.

The Tories are unlikely to ever support such a scenario. Privilege and division are their watchwords.

It is incumbent on Labour to make a self-critical appraisal of its governmental record on education and to make the case for a first-class schooling for all children led by a qualified, respected and appropriately rewarded teacher workforce.