Eleven Plus Results

There have been great technological advances in recent years. Many different tests and papers have been developed and a whole industry has built up around the eleven plus examinations. The tests and exercises, however, look only at restricted aspects of entry methods to grammar schools and do not look at the whole child. A verbal reasoning test result can not be used to gauge if a grammar school child will turn out to be lazy and unwilling.

Tests are used to rank children in a particular order. Testing at the eleven plus level can not measure loyalty or perseverance. After all, eleven plus tests results only report on a child’s progress at a given point in time.

We have girl who is with us working towards her SATs tests. When she was working on pre eleven plus mathematics back in July and August she found the work hard. She was a little more confident as the examinations approached. She can now tackle almost anything that is thrown at her. For her the eleven plus examinations arrived about 120 days too early.

We had a different girl with us last year. She failed the eleven plus by one mark. Her father wanted to appeal. Her mother, however, did not want her daughter to go to the grammar school. The school were willing to support an appeal – but the mother maintained that if her daughter had been meant to go to grammar school she would have passed first time.