Eleven Plus Rules

We use the phrase the `goal posts were moved’ in a number of different ways.

A key use in Eleven Plus terms is that we change the rules to try to gain an advantage.

The Vigo Rugby Football Club is located between Maidstone and Gravesend. The club was named after the pub in which someone had a great idea one boozy Sunday lunchtime. The idea was to start a rugby club.

The founders had a major problem when they tried to find a set of goal posts.

The Vigeons sent out begging letters to as many people as possible. No posts were forth coming. The men decided to make their own posts. They used the wood from some diseased elms in the nearby woods. The posts were trimmed and erected on the field loaned by the landlady of the Vigo pub.

The rugby players washed using a free standing tap in the field – and some changed in a nearby chicken coop. The club moved premises and fields a few times over the years – and then found a benefactor who bequeathed a ground large enough to build a clubhouse and fields. I wonder if the goal posts moved too?

I heard a story of two girls who went before an appeal board. One girl came from a good solid family.

The other girl, who had the same marks, had an emotional case made for her. The family were going through upheaval as the parents were in the process of an acrimonious separation. There had been a major row on the morning of one of the tests. The case that was made to the appeal board was that it was likely that the girl would possibly have done better if the parents had not yelled and screamed at each other.

If the appeal board took the separation into account – were the goal posts moved?

Did one of the girls gain an unfair advantage? (It is not difficult to work out which girl was offered the place.)