On Wednesday there will be about 1400 kids in my county who will be finding out that they have not passed the 11+. Another 300 or so will get a letter telling them that they have qualified, but with a low score, and these won’t end up going to grammar school. Another 900 will have “passed”, and the top-scoring 600 or so will have some certainty about which school they’ll be headed for, with 300 or so in the twilight zone, not knowing for sure until allocation day on 1st March.
For the 1400, I feel so sad. However sensible the parents are, about not making it a big thing, there are some who turn it into a high-stakes issue for their children, and this has something of a contagious effect in the playground. For the children, who for whatever reason didn’t have a champion morning a few weeks ago when they all did their test, they’ll carry that result with them from Wednesday all through their secondary education and perhaps beyond.
Hopefully most of them won’t care too much, but from the way I have heard local parents discuss it, with kids in earshot, I know that some of them will see it as a big deal, as indeed it is for those who will go to worse schools as a consequence.
AIBU to consider it wrong to impose this system on our children, relying on a single test which in many areas can’t be re-taken, and giving a large number of children in grammar areas the message at age 10 or 11 that they’re not good enough for academic education.
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65 replies
TheNext · 08/10/2017 17:44
OP posts:
Pengggwn ·
08/10/2017 17:55
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Pengggwn ·
08/10/2017 18:13
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