The government says the expansion of grammar schools will help all children but particularly the disadvantaged.

Education secretary Justine Greening has told MPs that the government reforms will help all children and will help push up standards.

The issue continues to divide opinion, with many saying that more grammar schools will entrench disadvantage.

Education secretary Justin Greening rejected the claim, saying: "We want selective schools to raise standards for everyone.Selective schools are good for everyone - particularly the most disadvantaged."

She added that the reforms were about a system that "works for everyone, not just the privileged few".

New grammars are likely to have to accept quota of poorer children or agreeing to sponsor a failing school and setting admissions arrangements allowing those who failed the eleven plus to apply again at 14 and at 16.

One grammar school headteacher in Kent said selective schools needed to do more to attract less well-off children and expressed misgivings about “super selective” grammars.

Matthew Bartlett, the head of Dover Girls Grammar School, said grammars should do more to counter the image that they were beyond the reach of poorer children and “not monsters with two heads.”

He said quotas would be difficult. “Some have tried that and it has failed. It is possible to have a lower score for children on free school meals. The thing that works is where a school is rooted in the community and there is a positive dialogue between primaries and secondaries. We need to provide enough information to parents about what they should do [to enter the test].”

He added that access to the county’s small group of super selective grammars - mainly in west Kent - that require the highest scores in the eleven plus further disadvantaged poorer pupils.

While the plans have drawn wide support among Kent MPs, they have been surprisingly criticised by the former education secretary Nicky Morgan - who gave the go-ahead to the Sevenoaks grammar annex in west Kent.

She said the policy would “undermine six years of progressive education reform” in a sign that there is not universal support for Theresa May and it could be a struggle for the government to get its plans through Parliament.

KCC Conservative leader Paul Carter said at the weekend the authority planned to ask the government to green light a boys annex at the Sevenoaks site.