Is May trying to engineer an early election?

It’s difficult to reconcile the Prime Minister’s evident ambitions with the realities of her circumstances – and not obvious she’s trying to.

Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: May offers Corbyn an undefended target

The Labour leader did better because the Prime Minister failed to make a convincing defence of grammar schools.

Sam Freedman: Selective schools destroy choice and competition. Why Conservatives should oppose May’s plans.

We have to accept that they represent a trade-off between a small minority than benefit and large majority that are penalised.

Greening’s grammar school plans get a warm welcome from Tory MPs – and only a little grumbling

Instead of the widely predicted rebellion, only half a dozen Conservative parliamentarians were openly negative. Others preferred to dig into the detail.

John Bald: New selective schools are just part of the mission to restore rigour

The Left’s claims to favour an alternative path to academic excellence lack credibility.

Tim Farron: A plea to Conservative MPs. It’s neither in Britain’s interest nor yours to back May’s grammar school plan

It wasn’t in your manifesto. And as a Liberal Democrat, I speak from experience when I say that letting people down on education can be very, very damaging.

May’s schools speech. She takes on a mass of vested interests. But can she beat them all at once?

Opponents of grammar schools, some supporters of them, a slice of the independent sector, secularists…all have reason not to be best pleased with her plans.

The Prime Minister’s speech on schools and meritocracy: full text

“It is a future in which Britain’s education system shifts decisively to support ordinary working class families.”

The treatment of Catholic schools is a “burning injustice” – a wrong that May is now set to right

But her decision and other recent ones also raise the question of whether Ministers really hold sway in their own departments.

Iain Dale: White Lives Matter too, because All Lives Matter

Also: Grammar schools are the wrong solution; the SNP boom while Labour slump; and why Davis is right about leaving the Single Market.

James Frayne: Why May needs two communications strategies running in tandem

Her relative quiet compares favourably to Cameron’s incessant commentary, but it’s not without cost.

Too much excitement about grammar schools, not enough about technical schools

Kenneth Baker is backing vocational education practically and enthusiastically. But too many other members of the Conservative family just aren’t interested in it.

John Glen: Grammar Schools. If you back streaming within schools, why oppose streaming between them?

Their opponents often deploy arguments that are simply out of date.

John Bell: Boiling the education debate down into grammars versus comprehensives misses the point

Both systems are flawed and fail to make the most of our children’s potential.

Garvan Walshe: Why May is right to reopen the debate on grammar schools

Academic selection provides both an incentive to play by the rules that will stand children in good stead in later life – and a means of escaping those who don’t.