Ministers have failed to justify continuing the policy of creating specialist secondary schools, a committee of MPs have concluded.

The Commons education select committee said not enough research existed to show the programme was based on "secure foundations".

Forum Response: Association of Teachers and Lecturers

Gwen Evans, joint acting general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: "This is an authoritative piece of work from the select committee and one which the government will ignore at its peril.

"With Exocet accuracy they have located the key weaknesses of the initiative - the lack of credible research, the problems of parental preference and the issue of selection by any other name.

"And while they and we welcome the evidence of increased collaboration between schools, there is still a worry that specialist schools are specially enthusiastic about collaboration that leads to recruitment rather than genuinely spreading good practice.

"We endorse the select committee's recommendation that the government faces up to the destabilising impact that a specialist school can have on the non-specialists.

"Best of all is the way the committee has broken free of the government's blinkered view of measures of achievement. We call on the government to refocus this initiative in the light of the select committee's powerful lead."Forum Response: National Union of Teachers

John Bangs, spokesman for the NUT, told ePolitix.com: "We welcome the report. It asks uncomfortable and fundamental questions of the government and it deserves to be answered fully in government and in parliament."