Why dont all kids do the 11+ like they apparently did 40/50 years ago?

[PinkChaires]

I am not from the UK and so i had no idea what a grammar school was when it came time for my dds to go to high school. By the time i found out it was two weeks before the test and apparently they had no chance at passing without tutoring ( trafford). Surely this disadvantages some kids? Kids who are smart but just simply do not have the opportunity to sit the test?

I'm in Trafford. People move to the area because of the schools so usually people who want to use the grammars know about them well in advance. My baby group was full of Altrincham residents talking about how they wanted to send their newborns to the grammars when they grew up!

So I've known about the schools from before I had dc. I thought about it quite hard as I chose a primary for my child because secondary options is one of the questions I asked when viewing the school.

I lined up a tutor well in advance and was prepared to tutor from year 4. As in I got my name down for a tutor when ds was in year 3. I subsequently decided to use a tutor from year 5 but he was tested for ability from year 4 and I spoke to his teachers in years 3 and 4 to check it was a suitable option for him.

Year 4 is when many parents start looking at schools to get a sense of what's out there even if not going to grammars. There's a lot of choice.

The majority of schools viewing goes on in year 5. The grammars open days are May/June time. By the time you start year 6 there's only 2 months to the schools deadline at the end of October.

There's always some parents who aren't bothered, send their kids to the nearest (failing) school and just turn up at the one open day in September of year 6.

You managed to leave it til just before the exam so you found out about the grammar system in August before year 6. That's on you, sorry to sound judgemental.

Trafford is unusual. There's very few places which still operate grammars. A large proportion of the kids have non UK parents so it's not mainly a white middle class enclave.

This was Croydon.

🤦‍♀️

Grammar schools do exist and if you look at the Times 100 best state funded schools they’re always heavily represented. No wonder. They test and select the brightest kids. They don’t have to deal with all the normal challenges of other state secondaries. That’s why house prices are high around grammars and the middle classes will move heaven and earth to get their kids in.

If they’re fee-paying it’s not the same. Some areas have ‘proper’ 11+ still. Some in areas that lost it became comprehensives or private but kept the name. This adds to the confusion.

As far as I'm aware Scotland and Wales don't have grammar schools and in NI they do but it's a different system from England. The whole 11+ and grammar school system the OP is referring to is just in England. My point was that to use a sweeping statement about the UK as a whole when it comes to schooling isn't accurate at all because everywhere is different.

My children all went to grammar school and their friends birthdays were spread across the year !
My youngest had 2friends at different grammar schools and both born 30th August.

@ObvANameChange

"And read my post again, I said the CONTENT is the same. Whether you’re doing GL, in house, CEM or ISEB, if you do well at one you’ll do well all. If you mess up one you’ll mess up all."

This just isn't true. The content varies greatly depending on the school. I know children who have failed the entrance papers for very selective private schools, but have passed the state grammar 11+ easily. My children sat papers for more than one school and the content was different, as was the difficulty.

They got rid of it, for a reason. The test itself is flawed. It was based on a study carried out by Cyril Burt, who later admitted he’d made up some of his research results. Not all children are at the same level of maturity at age eleven. Those who aren’t so mature are disadvantaged by the 11+.

I took the 11+ and failed. I was sent to an awful school and I hated it. I believed that I wasn’t very clever. However, I had the opportunity to go back into education as an adult. Amazingly I did extremely well. I achieved grade A at GCSEs and grade A at A level. I have a diploma, a degree and a post grad in teaching. It turns out that I am pretty academic, so a school that focused on knitting and sewing for girls was never going to suit me.

I find the tutoring of children to get into grammar school bizarre. If your kid needs tutoring to pass, it isn’t the right school for them. No harm in showing them a couple of test papers to familiarise them with the style of questions but tutoring them sets them up for a difficult school life unless you plan to continue with it throughout high school.

Also, for those talking about summer born children being under represented, allowances in the test score are made for the month a child is born.

I’m a single parent, live in social housing, job that requires top up from UC, 2 children.

Dd passed her 11 plus without tutoring and did very well at our local grammar school, the style of learning suited her. Some of her friends who had been tutored to pass had a thoroughly miserable time at school. They spent their evenings and weekends trying to keep up with the work, with the richer families continuing to pay for tutors. Out of the group of 6 good friends my Dd made, only 3 of them have continued to Uni, and it’s the kids from poorer families that were naturally more able. The other 3, one went travelling after GCSE’s, funded by parents, and hasn’t yet returned. One broke under the pressure and left half way through A levels and hasn’t worked or studied since. One played a sport to an elite level but was made to give it up to concentrate on studying, was so miserable she didn’t get the grades she needed at gcse, and now lives with her older boyfriend at the other end of the country.

Ds was 5 marks off passing his, again no tutoring, so he has gone to the local comp which is much more suitable for him.

The 11+ style grammar system exists in NI, you don’t know what you’re talking about. The only difference is that it’s much more common. The mandatory 11+ continued much longer and now schools can set their own transfer test. The system isn’t different.

Nobody does in my area because we have no grammar schools.
Where my brother and SIL live have a grammar school system and they're already a bit stressed at the thought of whether their DS will go through 11+ or not and if he doesn't he will end up in a worse school.
Personally I think it should be abolished, it's unfair on the children who do it to have all that stress and pressure at such a young age, and it's unfair on the ones whose parents can't or won't afford tutoring

I find the tutoring of children to get into grammar school bizarre. If your kid needs tutoring to pass, it isn’t the right school for them.

Then you haven’t appreciated one of the main reasons parents pay for tutoring. It’s not to try to get less able children to pass, it’s because there are so few grammar schools in some areas (or none at all) that it’s not in any way good enough to pass. The child has to get a very high score to get in.

No more stress than all the tests at primary school. I don’t just mean SATS, I mean the constant reading and Maths tests and phonics assessments. And, if we’re going to worry about how stressful tests are, why not do away with them all, including GCSEs, etc.

Not really. Scotland doesn’t have them at all. In NI they’re still prevalent. Wales have very few and only a few select areas of England have them (Bucks, Kent, Trafford, London, with a few scattered ones in Birmingham, Yorkshire, Chester and a few others). In the areas where they do exist, though, they’re certainly a ‘thing’!

I live in a grammar county with one of the countries best...it makes a mockery of the whole system. Most of the children who attend are from out of the area - literally miles away.
My child goes to a 'good' local secondary and is doing really well; 11+ is a circus here and another example of privilege as those who can pay for tutors and have the time and money to commute their child to school have all the advantage.
A clever child will do well anywhere, but an average privileged child can still garner that advantage.

The content is not the same. CEM, for example (though as of this year not really used as they’ve moved away from online provision) is heavily English based. The vocabulary required is far more difficult than in ISEB. GL is more heavily maths based. You also suggested that private schools have the same content as grammars. As I’ve explained to you, this is entirely inaccurate. They don’t. At all.

Regardless of what they do in NI, it still isn't UK wide

Yes, of course they do, that’s the whole point. Why would anyone want their child to spend their school life constantly having to put extra work in outside of school to try to keep up. I’m watching it happen to one of Ds’ friends now, in year 8 at grammar school, tutored for 2 years to pass the exam, had to stop 2 of his much loved activities because he can’t keep up with the work. Parents now having to pay for maths and English tutors

Just to add, our local private school entrance exams are far easier than the 11+ and totally different content

It's not just grammar areas which are expensive. We're looking to move out of London to a commuter town with our summer-born toddler and ideally would like to choose an area where we'd be happy to stay for secondary rather than having to move again. Despite having loved my own grammar school, we're leaning towards comprehensive counties to avoid the stress and competitiveness of the grammar system. We've been searching for months and I haven't found an excellent comprehensive that we can afford to move near - the catchments are tiny and being in catchment seems to add a couple of hundred £k to the house prices (and of course who knows if the school will still be so good in a decade's time when she actually goes!). It would actually be more affordable to move into the very large grammar catchments where you can get a cheaper house further away but potentially score well enough to get in. I'm not sure it is hugely less fair to rely on academic ability (albeit boosted by tutoring and other advantages) rather than purely massive parental wealth of buying in catchment of an outstanding comp.

It very much depends on the school. In our area, the state grammar exams are far easier than the more selective privates.

Kindly OP, I'm so surprised you live in Trafford and only heard about grammar schools two weeks before the exam. It's a top topic of conversation across playgrounds and any parent gatherings locally. Numerous tuition centres in every suburb advertising 11+ services, lots of information on school websites and the council re: the process.

As pp have said eg @ZenNudist so many people specifically move into Trafford primarily for grammar schools, including many from outside the UK. Sadly, there were multiple ways you could have been more informed and you are best to accept the situation and move on. There are many 'good' high schools in Trafford outside the selective ones, so I hope she's doing well.

Re: your friend's child getting a place after tuition since year 3, that's ridiculous but not uncommon. My child had one year's tuition and passed with a high mark. He probably would have passed with less tuition, but it was an insurance policy for me. He's competing with many others having had multiple years of tuition and timed exam practice, so I wanted him prepared. The whole system is game, you wouldn't put a child into a race without training, so we prepared at a level that was right for us.

No, you said that parents were getting tutoring to help less able children pass. I said that that wasn’t the main reason in many areas. In my area, tutoring is for bright children who would have no problem with the grammar school work, but need tutoring not to pass the 11+, which they could do easily, but to obtain the necessary very high score to get into the school - that is, a score way above the pass mark.

So, your comments about less able children scraping a pass through tutoring, then not coping with the grammar school work doesn't apply to the children I’m talking about.

The situation in question was over 5 years ago 😂 i have most definitely gotten over it thanks. I dont live in Trafford itself, more near central Manchester actually so i only heard about it when hearing about tutoring as they wouldn't exactly be local to us. I just asked because i was reminded with a friends dd getting in