The Conservative leadership provoked fury from the party's right wing this afternoon, after declaring that grammar schools and academic selection deepen the divisions between Britain's rich and poor.

In a decisive abandonment of its long-held policy to build more of the schools, the party's education spokesman David Willetts today said a Tory Government would instead work to develop more of Tony Blair's privately-sponsored academies, describing them as "a powerful route to higher standards".

He said that grammar schools typically took the more privileged members of their local catchment areas, with only a tiny proportion of pupils on free school meals.

The Shadow Education Secretary's speech, made to the CBI this lunchtime, was designed to emphasise the changing nature of the Tory Party and allow it to compete in the political centre ground over education.

However, his comments caused a political row between modernisers and Tory traditionalists, who remain in favour of selection within the state sector.

The grammar school-educated Conservative MP Roger Gale denounced it as "bizarre" and "extremely foolish," claiming that selection in the state sector gave poorer parents an incentive to boost their children's performance.

"There are still parents from all walks of life who regard the education of their children as of paramount importance, and who are prepared to forgo luxuries such as foreign holidays to pay for extra-curricular activities for their sons and daughters. Is that now a crime?" he told BBC Radio Kent.

"My party is being extremely foolish if it is going to nail its colours to the city academy mast before we find out whether they will work or not."

Fellow Tory traditionalist Edward Leigh, the chairman of the right-wing Cornerstone group of MPs, said that selection should not be dismissed as a way of bringing people out of poverty.

"We should not rule out state schools being able to select pupils, and grammar schools have been one way of getting people out of inner city ghettos," he said.

And Norman Tebbit, the Thatcherite former Cabinet minister, said: "This would be a mistake. Selective education should be available to poor people as well as to rich people, who can afford to send their children to exclusive public schools."

At Prime Minister's Questions today, John Prescott - standing in for Tony Blair, who was away in Washington - teased Tory MPs about divisions over the new policy.

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