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Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Mental Ability and the Eleven Plus

Some parents may wonder what happens to their children if they do not pass the eleven plus. After all passing the eleven plus assumes such a monumental place in the psyche that it hard to look ahead. There was some interesting research back in 1941 about intelligence. It must be remembered that the eleven plus was being talked about in much detail in the early 1940s. The examination came fully into force later on in the decade with the establishment of more grammar school places.

The Terman-McNemar Test of Mental Ability (1941) looked at what happened to intelligence after the age of ten. It was believed that the ability to perform well on mental tests reached a peak at around fourteen, fifteen and sixteen years of age.

AGE NORMS FOR THE TERMAN-McNEMAR TEST OF MENTAL ABILITY

Age in . Standard . Increment
Years . . Score . . . . Over Preceding Year
10 . . . 77
11 . . . 84 . . . . . . . . . 7
12 . . . 90 . . . . . . . . . 6
13 . . . 95 . . . . . . . . . 5
14 . . . 100 . . . . . . . . . 5
15 . . . 105 . . . . . . . . . 5
16 . . . 109 . . . . . . . . . 4
17 . . . 113 . . . . . . . . . 4
18 . . . 117 . . . . . . . . . 4
19 . . . 120 . . . . . . . . . 3

It is not all that clear what happens after the age of nineteen, but could it be likely that mental growth continues beyond this point? After all life and thinking does not need to stop at nineteen. The research tried to show that there was a steady growth in intellectual capacity. Thorndike, another immensely popular psychologist at that time suggested that there was a decline of only fifteen per cent between the ages of twenty-two and forty-two!

Some parents, if we can still believe these statistics from many years ago, can take heart. If their child does not reach the required level at the age of ten – there is a chance that by nineteen everything will have evened out.

It only remains for some parents, as they look at some eleven plus questions, must wonder if the reported decline, at suggested by Thorndike, is actually taking place!

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