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Sunday, March 06, 2011

Eleven Plus Ideas and Incentives

Should eleven plus children be offered incentives or should bright academic children study for the simple sake of working towards a competitive examination?

“But Mum, I work hard at school, I do my homework. Holidays are holidays. I am a child. I should rest. I do not want to work over Easter holidays. I am going to my grandmother to rest – I do not want to work!”

A hospital in Norwich once ran a traditional staff suggestion scheme without much success. Someone thought of a novel idea – they used IVAN IDEA – with gifts and rewards.

The scheme produced 2500 ideas – and one idea that emerged from the scheme was to use blue paper towels instead of white ones. This saved the hospital thousands of pounds a year as blue paper can be made from waste paper.

If we asked our present eleven plus children it is likely that we could come up with thousands of ideas on how to make life in the eleven plus lane easier.

Some will have experienced the bus lane on the M4. Someone then had an idea to take the bus lane away. As a person who has travelled occasionally on the M4 during morning rush hour, I applaud the decision to scrap the lane.

Why not offer your child an incentive to see if he or she can come up with a good idea to make the perpetual scramble for the eleven plus easier. The results could be graded – some may be useful.

The same question could be asked without the offering of an incentive.

Most parents would have a pretty strong idea of the effectiveness of an `Eleven Plus Incentive Scheme’ or “IVAN IDEA 11+”.

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