Proposals to be announced "very shortly" would offer parents and children across England "a proper choice of good schools" and not "a choice between passing the 11-plus and failing it and having to go off to a sink school of the kind that's let our children down so badly", he said.

"Not every child is suited to a purely academic grammar school education and it's really important that there are proper alternatives that are equally outstanding in the quality of education they deliver."

Mrs May’s commitment to creating new grammar schools and expanding existing selective schools was confirmed on Tuesday in a leaked document. She is now expected to announce plans to end the ban on new grammar schools, which was introduced by Tony Blair in 1998.

She will publish a green paper and give a major speech after telling MPs last night that she wants a new generation of grammar schools to be “inclusive and not exclusive”.