The 11 Plus is discriminatory and the grammar school system is a sham as privileged children are tutored.
I live in Kent which is one of the few places left which operates a Grammar school system. I have long felt that the system doesn’t work. Back when I took (and failed) the 11 Plus (also known as the Kent Test) the test itself was very different and there was no such thing tutoring for it.
These days it seems to be the norm to tutor children to prepare to take the 11+ if they wish to take it. Mainstream schools are not allowed to “teach” the 11 plus, however private schools can as they are not legally tied to the national curriculum in the way mainstream schools are. The 112 is supposed to be unteachable, but clearly it isn’t.
Tutoring for the 11 Plus
Tutoring starts pretty early here in Sevenoaks, with a lot of parents opting to start from year 4, the 11+ test is taken at the beginning of year 6.
Children often have weekly sessions with a private tutor and intensive courses are offered over school holidays. Obviously, tutoring does not come cheap, having looked online I’ve found prices for group sessions (3 to 4 children) to be about £25 an hour each with 1 to 1 tuition being £45 an hour. People pay these prices in order to get their children into a Grammar school! This is obviously not something your average parent can afford.
Tutoring for the 11+ discriminates against children from less privileged backgrounds
I mean, it’s obvious, right? I know there is the argument that you can buy books yourself and help your children at home but that’s supposing you have:
a) The money to buy the books
b) The time to sit with your child
c) The intelligence to help your child – no offense meant, but the books sent me screwy and I don’t think I’m the least intelligent person on the face of the earth
Of course tutoring gives wealthier children an advantage, if it didn’t it wouldn’t exist. This is not a level playing field by any stretch of the imagination.
We opted for our (now 13 year old) son to do the 11+. We felt that it would give him more options, despite not being too keen on single sex schools which all the local grammar schools are currently. After realising that he was one of very few children who wasn’t being tutored I bought the books in a bit of a panic. We looked at them and I think it confused him more than had I not bought them. He missed passing the 11+ by a couple of marks and now attends the local comprehensive that has a Grammar Stream, which he is in and is thriving. Would he be doing so well at a grammar school? We will never know!
Our local boy’s grammar school is trying to level the playing field
Yesterday I received an email from my 8 year old son’s primary school, actually I received about five but the other four were about the school fete among other things. The email was from a local Grammar school offering an online tutoring service for Key Stage 2 Pupil Premium children:
The programme
Narrowing the educational divide with KS2 learning and 11+ preparation support for Pupil Premium pupilsTo encourage even greater representation of children at Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys and support KS2 children in the area around us, we’ve partnered with Atom Learning, the leading online 11+ preparation and Key Stage 2 learning platform, to provide all children who are eligible for Pupil Premium (both boys and girls) with a free programme of Key Stage 2 learning and 11+ preparation materials.
This programme is designed to help all children consolidate and master Key Stage 2 learning objectives and, where relevant, familiarise them with the topics they may see on their 11+ exam. Our goal is to ensure that all children, regardless of their future aspirations, leave primary school having mastered the KS2 curriculum, and that every grammar school applicant, regardless of their background, goes into their 11+ exam feeling confident and able to show their full potential.
All children who are eligible for Pupil Premium (not just those considering grammar school) will be given free access to Atom Home (normally £575.90 a year).
Why have we set this programme up?
Despite encouragement from both primary and secondary schools to parents that the best method of entrance test preparation is mastery of the national curriculum, we recognise that the most common method of preparing for the 11+ is still intensive coaching and private tuition.
This environment ends up providing some children with a comparative advantage, and ultimately widens the educational divide.
Our goal is to combat this by providing families who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford them with high-quality, reputable test preparation materials. Both Atom Learning and Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys advocate for a child-centric approach to learning and revision. Atom Learning is built around the national curriculum with added resources for reasoning, and is designed to encourage regular, short, focused learning, with the belief that this is the best route for test preparation and long-term success at secondary school.
You may be asking “What is pupil premium?”
The pupil premium grant is funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools in England.
For full details check out the government website which details eligibility as well as the rates.
So, even a Grammar School is aware that the current 11 Plus is discriminatory
I am in two minds about the fact that they are offering this, in fact I’m in more than two minds!
First of all it’s great that they understand that there are children who have slipped through the net due to their families financial situation. Secondly, what about the children who aren’t eligible for pupil premium but whose family is still not in a position to afford private tutoring, and there are plenty of them. Lastly, it’s the annoyance that tutoring is even a thing. It clearly shouldn’t be a thing, yet, here we are. In the email from the grammar school it states:
Despite encouragement from both primary and secondary schools to parents that the best method of entrance test preparation is mastery of the national curriculum
However, my son’s primary school pretty much encouraged tutoring. At one of the end of year meetings one of the teachers stood up in front of all the parents and said that they had brought the CAT3 test forward a year in order for parents/carers to determine whether their child would be worth putting forward for the 11+ because, and I kid you not, if you want them to be tutored, they get booked up a year in advance.
My son got very good results on the CAT 3 test which shows somewhat how flawed the 11+ is since he didn’t pass it.
What is the answer to the 11+ problem?
My thoughts are that in an ideal world the grammar system wouldn’t exist. I have no problem with academic streaming – I have two sons, one is very academic and the other has ADHD, is autistic and dyspraxic and struggles in mainstream education (that is a post for another day) – and I really believe that streaming to ability works best for them both. I wouldn’t want one to get bored or the other to feel like he was not as good as his peers (which is something he certainly struggles with).
As I see it people want their children to go to grammar school as they believe they will get a better education there, there are more opportunities and so on (feel free to let me know if this is not the case but I cannot think of another reason) but imagine if there wasn’t a grammar system. What if every child had the same opportunities as they all attended the local school, lessons were streamed by subject so children who are good at maths but not necessarily English could be in the top set for maths and excel and be in a stream better suited to their ability for English *sigh*.
What do you think is the answer?
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