The education policy jungle drums are quickening - a White Paper following the publication of last Autumn’s hugely contentious Schools that Work for Everyone Green Paper is just around the corner.

This is the point when many of the most loathed parts of the proposed reforms could be dropped without too much loss of face for the policy’s authors.

As such there are more than a few people hoping that the White Paper will have mysteriously lost chunks of the controversial Green Paper’s ideas. For example, it’s no secret that the independent sector is battling to see off proposals which would force its schools to sponsor academies or lose their charitable status if they don’t.

Within the plans to increase selection, the most derided idea (beyond all of it) is the section that would allow existing comprehensives to convert to grammar status.

This clause represents the real meat of the policy: the real game-changer. It’s all well and good encouraging multi-academy trusts (MATs) to set up a selective school within their federations, or allowing new free schools to select, but this would be small fry compared with the idea that William Stewart Academy around the corner could - over-night, as it were - suddenly decide to set an entrance exam. The idea that schools could convert en masse is, not unreasonably, terrifying to many.

Most people inside the Westminster policy bubble thought that this idea was just a little too mad - and was likely to go “missing in action” with the prospect of actual real-life legislation that comes with a White Paper.

I have now learned, however, that this hope was very likely misplaced.

‘Enormously controversial’

There is yet time for a change of heart, but as it stands Downing Street still plans to include this enormously controversial policy in the White Paper. I understand that it is considering a number of restrictions (including something that may limit the number of grammars in a given area), but basically Theresa May’s people are set to plough ahead.

There are two reasons why this is such a big deal.

Firstly, no capital funding would be needed. This makes it much, MUCH easier to get hundreds of new grammar schools very quickly. Once the legislation is passed, it would be as simple as changing any given school’s admissions policies (notwithstanding the aforementioned hoops the DfE may make schools jump through).

Secondly, there is the possibility of a domino effect. Again, there is a chance that the DfE’s restrictions might be successful in stopping this happening, but in a deregulated system that now encourages competition between MATs, there’s a very real danger that if one school in a town or area opts for grammar status, other schools or chains will feel they have no choice but to follow suit. And once the hare is loose, the government will struggle to pull it back.

It would seem that these two concerns - no doubt articulated in hundreds of the responses to the Green Paper consultation - have not persuaded No 10.

There are, of course, many parliamentary barriers to this change making it into law, not least of all the wafer-thin Tory majority, but Theresa May and those closest to her are by all accounts determined to push this through.

Assuming there’s not a last-minute change of heart, and that a possible Tory rebellion fails, this could be a very, very big deal indeed for many, many schools.

Ed Dorrell is head of content at the TES

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow TES on Twitter and like TES on Facebook