Tory faces sack for defying Cameron on school policy

A senior Tory MP faces dismissal from the party's front bench after challenging David Cameron's grammar schools policy.

Graham Brady, the shadow Europe minister, was ordered to stop making public comments on the subject after he released data suggesting areas with selective schools achieve better examination results.

The Tory leader has faced a week of internal party criticism for dropping his party's commitment to building more grammar schools. Mr Brady received a dressing-down from Patrick McLoughlin, the Tory chief whip, yesterday for defying the leadership.

A party spokeswoman said Mr Brady had been "severely reprimanded" and told to "stick to his brief".

He retains his place on the party's front bench for the moment, but looks certain to lose his post in the Tory reshuffle expected next month to coincide with Gordon Brown's succession to Downing Street.

Mr Cameron had declared that the grammar schools row was "over", insisting he wanted to focus instead on academic achie-vement within non-selective schools. But Mr Brady reignited the controversy by releasing data to The Times which indicated that in areas with no selective education 42.6 per cent of pupils get five or more GCSEs at grade A*-C including English and maths, compared to 46 per cent in partially selective areas and 49.8 per cent in areas where all pupils take the 11-plus.

He said: "These facts appear to confirm my own experiences: that selection raises the standards for everyone in both grammar and high schools in selective areas. I accept the party's policy on grammar schools. But it is vitally important that policy should be developed with a full understanding of the facts, which might lead to the introduction of selection in other ways."

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