The Eleven Plus Project

Some parents may feel a strong desire to direct their thoughts towards making the eleven plus journey into a project. After all projects have been used in education for many years. Projects also have a role to play in adult life. So why not establish the `Eleven Plus Project’?

The term was used by Kilpatrick in the spring of 1918. He felt that a project needed to be a purposeful activity. He also argued that there was a strong element of a `social environment’ within a project. He hoped for sharpened intellectual acumen and enhanced moral judgement.

What Kilpatrick was on about was the way that reading, spelling, mathematics and English were all taught as separate entities and that there was a need to combine the activities.

This would mean children studying in the `Project Eleven Plus’ manner working on mathematics and English as well as verbal and non verbal reasoning papers – but not as four separate subjects but as a wholly integrated unit.

Grammar schools would need to understand that the extent of net that an integrated Eleven Plus syllabus would cast. After all it is possible that a different type of intellect would be exposed. Eleven plus tutors would need to teach methods of investigation and analysis rather than how to answer preset types of examination question. (Which word is opposite?) It would be far more difficult to set the eleven plus syllabus in advance. It may even be much more difficult for major publishers and players in the eleven plus market to set the agenda.

Of course a new curriculum would appear very swiftly. Publishers and examining bodies would quickly organise the subjects into some form of structure. Chapters would appear. Spin off would spin off. The whole excitement over a new form of the eleven plus would swiftly dissipate.

There is a chance, however, that a small number of children would be able to benefit from a grammar school education even if they did not know how to cope with analogies and codes.

Eleven Plus Questions

We can’t blame the Eleven Plus for everything but big changes took place in England around the 1950s. Schools stopped teaching many subjects that had been part of a child’s education for many years. Teachers today do not seem to as involved in the classic subjects like Latin and Poetry. The whole tenor of the Eleven Plus would change today if elements of these two subjects were to become part of the so called eleven plus syllabus.

We know that some children are going to go on to be great explorers – these children will hear strange songs and dance to new beats. They will hear poems in other languages – sometimes with great epic stories. Other children will prefer to stay close to home and enjoy the familiar sounds and noises of their childhood.

Who is to say if the poem produced by one courageous child is better than one built up in a painstaking manner by a child who will never live more than a mile from the ancestral home? Should the poetry in the eleven plus then be about the analysis of a poem (as in the current GCSE examinations) or the form of a creative adventure?

There is a little song from Zimbabwe that may entertain. The song does not set out to be an epic. It does not try to scan. There is no need for an audit of feelings and emotions – it is simply a little song sung by some Mashona families:

Pasi Pamera Ziso

Pasi pamera ziso tururuzai wona

Wonawona ziso tururuzai wona.

Of course a multiple choice question is easier to mark and grade. Would an A Level English teacher at a grammar school, however, prefer a child who can think and create to one who arrived in the 6th form having been carefully drilled at the age of ten into answering certain types of questions?

Why should children pass the Eleven Plus?

Apart from saving the fees at a top class independent school, why would parents want their children to pass the eleven plus?

It has been estimated that:

A primary school education increases a man’s productivity by 50%.

Secondary school education by 110%

University education by 315%.

Parents will want to try to explain these thought to their children by a variety of practical methods. There must be flaws in the following arguments.

Method One. Use a big juicy apple.
Take an apple as the whole. Cut it into three parts – representing the 300%. Take one section so we are now down to one third – or around the 100% mark. Cut this last third in half and we are down to 50%. Dog the pip out and this is where education starts to count.

Method Two. Empty the piggy bank.
Count 315 pennies into one pile.
Count 110 into another pile.
Count 50 into another pile.
Place one small penny all by itself.

Use the evidence to try to drive home the need to keep working and trying hard.

Eleven Plus Questions

A Brief Survey on Parental Aspirations: (Where 0 is low and 5 is high)

Why do you want your child to go to grammar school?

The standard of teaching and learning would be better

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

Children would learn more than at other schools.

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

Grammar schools lead to better career prospects

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

The grammar school curriculum is `better’.

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

The subjects a grammar school offers will interest the children.

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

Grammar schools will stretch academic ability.

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

Grammar schools will develop intellectual ability

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

Grammar schools will develop leaders.

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

There are social advantages in going to grammar school.

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

The traditions of grammar school are an advantage.

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

Grammar schools develop character.

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

Grammar schools prepare children for life.

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

Parents feel that their children will mix with the `right type of child’.

0 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 4- 5

Some of these statements may stimulate discussion.