Eleven Plus Papers

A group of mothers from one class at school were discussing the eleven plus. Some maintained that one type of paper was more valuable for eleven plus preparation than others. The mothers decided to go out for dinner and settle the discussion through good food, superb wine and animated chat. The hot topic of the eleven plus remained the glue that held the evening together.

One of the mothers was a born organiser. She pulled out her ipad and asked the mothers for eleven plus scores on two different but popular papers. Each mother was able to respond immediately – after all eleven plus scores are imbedded into every waking thought – transcending even the need to provide the next meal on the table.

Score A 43 59 76 28 53 55 81 49 38 47
Score B 67 82 75 48 91 63 67 51 44 54

The mothers discussed the scores and tried to draw conclusions. Just as it all became a little heated the daughter of one of the mothers arrived to take her mum home. She listened for a moment and then remarked quietly. “We can sort this out statistically.”

(One proud mum nearly turned a somersault.)

The girl suggested:

Draw a scatter graph to illustrate the data. Wine was forgotten for a moment as all the heads came together.

Calculate the value of the product moment correlation between Scores A and Scores B.

The girl, by now in her stride, asked the assembled mothers if they would be kind enough to comment on how they would expect the scatter diagram to change if all the children were given the same help and assistance.

The mothers all agreed that there was a positive correlation between the scores. They felt too that the evening had been a success and they wanted to repeat it next month. Two mothers promised to look out their A Level Statistics notes from years ago – and come armed to the next meeting.

The mother of the girl was so proud of her daughter that she had to be helped down the stairs. (Was this aided by the amount of the wine and her deep satisfaction with her daughter?)

The wine waiter, who was a mathematics graduate from Cambridge, asked the girl out for a date. (Only to discuss ` product moment correlation’ – not for any other ulterior motives.)

The sanctity of the eleven plus was preserved for another week.

Eleven Plus Papers

Some parts of the present eleven plus syllabus seem to be based on the nineteenth century curriculum which was built around the theory of `transfer of training’. This nineteenth century school of thought was that if a child acquired `mental discipline’ or was `trained formally’ then this could be applied to any other field.

Over the years there have been many instances of young men and women being thrust into challenging position by virtue of their education. We can look, for example, at the number of Prime Ministers that have been educated at Eton. Years ago these prime ministers would have been educated mainly in the classics. The concept of transfer of training’ was supposed to carry into other fields of leadership and endeavour.

Today we work on some rather specious verbal reasoning questions – especially those taken from venerable sources – and must wonder how this `transfer of training’ is supposed to work in the actual examination. We expect children to solve questions and problems on eleven plus papers – and then apply this knowledge in the actual examination.

We all hope that working through paper after paper will be of benefit in the examination. If would be wonderful if some erudite scholar could work out a formula where children could apply to spend as little time as possible on eleven plus work.