The 11+ was a eugenics test to weed out genetically "inferior" children, created by a classicist who falsified his research

[ParentOfOne]

I had already made a post a few months ago about why I think the 11+ and similar tests are flawed.

Since many families have just gone or are going through the 11+ drama now, I just wanted post a short but timely reminder that the 11+ was born as a eugenics test at the beginning of last century, when eugenics was all the rage. That meant looking for pseudo-scientific ways to improve the genetic "quality" of human population, by identifying "inferior" races and individuals, and "improving" the other ones.

The father of the 11+ was Cyril Burt, a posh t*at gentleman who studied classics at Oxford and then took an interest in psychology, without any training in medicine, psychology, mathematics, statistics.

He became convinced that intelligence was innate and not affected by the environment, and therefore wanted to find ways to identify the innately gifted and intelligent children, with the not so subtle implication that everyone else could go f* themselves was better suited for other, less academic pursuits.

Before dying, he burnt all his records and notes, and the current academic consensus is that he was guilty of scientific misconduct (falsifying data).

A campaign group against the 11+ and selective schools summarises his story here

If that seems too partisan, you might want to read what the British Psychological Society has to say (spoiler: mostly the same things).

To recap:

• the 11+ was created by a posh t* who had studied Classics and lacked any training in psychology, statistics, mathematics, the sciences in general
• the ideology behind it was the (now debunked) idea that intelligence is innate and unaffected by the environment
• the gentleman in question had fabricated a large part of his research
• there is no scientific study on the reliability of these tests, on how better or not the kids who ace these tests do vs the kids who do not, on why answering those questions in 30 seconds makes you more intelligent than answering them in 45, etc
• the very concept of IQ is controversial
• when similar tests are used by psychologists, they cannot be administered too frequently, otherwise the results are biased. This alone proves that the notion that there can be no tutoring is utter bs, as proven by the huge industry that exists around tutoring for the 11+
• it is well known that selective and partially selective state schools are hugely SOCIALLY selective; the % of kids on free school meals at those schools is always much lower than elsewhere (e.g. only 5.8% at Henrietta Barnett in London). Cyryl Burt would have said that richer kids are inherently more intelligent; I call bs and say those schools select the kids whose families can either tutor them themselves or pay for tutoring

So, if you are non-white and/or non-British and/or working class, remember that these tests were conceived with the explicit aim of weeding out undesirable and obviously genetically inferior people like you (if any artificial stupidity censor reads this, that was sarcasm ).

It is irrelevant how much 11+ score correlates to good GCSE or whether they correlate at all. The relevant measure is whether the whole cohort do better under this system or not. And when designing educational interventions, it is the population that matters not individuals; there will always be individual outliers.

one-sitting selection processes will be highly sensitive to chance variation in pupil results.

The is also the case for any exams, including GCSEs.

they should just do productive work and get paid the same wages as any adult

How is it a strawman to point out this is communism?

@CatchingtheCat How is this a strawman and not communism?

Were you replying to me or to someone else?

If you were replying to me, it's a strawman because I NEVER said nor implied anything which, even with all the bad faith in this world, could possibly remotely be misconstrued as any sort of levelling down.

I advocate a system which does divide kids by ability, but over time, and which offers a diverse range of options for a diverse range of skills.

I fail to understand what that would have to do with communism. Can you kindly explain it to me please?

when designing educational interventions, it is the population that matters not individuals; there will always be individual outliers.

So you consider ca. 1/4 of the kids misclassified as "outliers"?
Out of curiosity, what threshold of misclassification would you be willing to accept before considering a test unreliable? 30%? 40%? 50%?

@FancyBiscuitsLevel
The problem with comparing the results of the Kent test and the year 6 SATs is you presume the same effort is put in for each

So you admit that the notion that these are untutorable tests which assess innate ability is bullshit?

The Kent test is remarkably similar to the SATs (not identical, but similar).
If a kid who has done well in the Kent test loses so much of their supposedly innate ability after just a few months, that to me is a huge question mark on the validity of the test itself. Not to you?

Were you replying to me or to someone else?

Are you using sock puppet accounts? Or why would you assume I was implying anything about what you said when I comment on another poster’s post?

So you consider ca. 1/4 of the kids misclassified as "outliers"?
Out of curiosity, what threshold of misclassification would you be willing to accept before considering a test unreliable? 30%? 40%? 50%?

It is irrelevant.

Every child I know who passed the Kent test got full marks in their SATs with no preparation outside of school. Granted this was 10 years ago. SATs are disregarded by grammar schools. In fact I kept DC2 in tutoring for yr 6 as the classwide SATs work was easy and boring to DC1 after he had taken the 11+ in September

Any type of IQ test, which includes the 11+, needs to be valid and reliable, otherwise it’s worthless.

If a test is to be valid, then it has to test what it purports to test. The 11+ claims to test intelligence and to predict future academic abilities. In fact what it actually tests is a child’s knowledge and skills at a single point in time.

Intelligence itself can be hard to define, so what exactly are they testing? Studies show clearly that intelligence and ability isn’t fixed and continues to evolve throughout life, with rapid brain development occurring during the teenage years. The very period a child may have been written off by a flawed test.

Does the test assess motivation? Growing evidence suggests that motivation energize and guide the cognitive performance of a typical test taker (Duckworth et al., 2011). Relatedly, the dispositional theory of intelligence (Perkins et al., 1993) predicts that trait motivations drive much of the variation in performance on the IQ tests. Likewise, research suggests that traits such as growth mindset, openness to experience, and need for cognition modulate the willingness to search and process information that, in turn, influences an individual’s performance on an IQ test (Dweck, 2006; Woods et al., 2019

As a reliable test will give the same results consistently, as preparation and practice can improve the score, then it’s argued that the test is not reliable. Many 11+ exams include questions based on logic puzzles, practice and tuition can significantly improve a child's score, making the test less of a measure of inherent ability and more a reflection of preparation.

A child’s academic performance is also heavily influenced by factors like dedication, interest in school, and a supportive home environment, which the 11+ doesn't measure.

We’re left with a test that is neither valid or reliable.

@Neurodiversitydoctor Every child I know who passed the Kent test got full marks in their SATs with no preparation outside of school

Ah,, yes, the usual approach of considering that one's limited experience must necessarily be representative. From someone who has "doctor" in their nickname, I would have expected better.

I don't know anyone who has ever been raped. Does this mean rapes don't happen??

@CatchingtheCat It is irrelevant.

I do not follow. What criteria do you use to assess whether a test is valid or not? Note: "it worked well for me or my child" is hardly a scientific criterion

@Garamousalata Well said!!

What I am saying is that SATs and the Kent test are in no way comparable. Do you understand normal distribution ? SATs are insufficiently sensitive for those DCs more than 1SD from the mean as they wil pretty much all get 100%. The Kent test has a great senstivity at the higher end and very possibly less at the other end. So yes some DC will do well in SATs but not achieve a good enough score in the Kent test to attend a grammar, even more likely if SS. I very much doubt it happens the other way with grammar school DCs who didn't do well in their SATs ( possibly some prep schools who do no prepartion for them).

@Neurodiversitydoctor Found this, awful lot of grammar schools in there for 5% of the opulation
^https://thetab.com/2025/08/15/the-state-schools-that-get-the-most-students-into-oxbridge-including-four-that-beat-eton^

If it's the same data I have seen elsewhere, it underestimates state schools, because it excludes the schools which send few students. E.g. if 30 schools sent 2 students each, you won't see them there.

Still, sure, grammar schools do well on this metric, but it's hardly surprising.

I am not sure what your point is.

Are you conflating correlation with causation?

Priivate schools, grammar schools and London schools are all over-represented in these metrics. "Half of these schools are in London. Half are grammar schools. Only one school is in the Midlands"

The difference is driven by the intake. It's not like these schools and Midlands schools all have the same intake, but private / grammar / London schools transform an average student into an Oxbridge scholar. Those schools already select the students who are most likely to succeed. It's not like moving to London automatically makes you smarter because there is something in the air which Blackpool lacks.

The real tragedy is that white working class kids (boys more than girls) are being failed by the system, and you see this in the areas where this demographic is more concentrated (eg the north more than London).

Simplifying and exaggerating, the right says that if you're poor it's your fault, that these families don't value education, are lazy people on benefits giving a bad example to their children, etc.
The left says it's all society's fault for failing the poor, never the person's fault.

The truth is probably somewhere in between.
It is certainly a factor that British-Asian and immigrant communities may tend to place more value on education, and support and push their kids more.

No, they just get paid the same as an adult in their work. (Sometimes they can be paid less as a vocational/training position, which o don’t think is quite right)

You make these kids sound like a resource to be exploited for their talents. Maybe they don't want to do it. Maybe they have no idea in fact what they want to do as their parents have not listened to them but pushed and pushed for them to do science, maths etc.

I have a friend who decided that her son should be an actuary because it is so well paid and this boy was brought up with the goal of studying actuarial science at uni and he hated it and now teaches tai chi.

I do not follow. What criteria do you use to assess whether a test is valid or not? Note: "it worked well for me or my child" is hardly a scientific criterion

Whether it gives better results for the whole cohort (including both those who passed and those who failed or didn’t take the test) in adulthood or not.

@CatchingtheCat Define better: if 51% of the cohort gets a "better" result, that works for you, and the 49% for whom it didn't work can suck it up?

It always goes back to how much misclassification we are willing to accept. You can't say it's "irrelevant"

But the lowest 30% is not a uniform group. There will be those unable to work or do so without a lot of support. Those who struggled at school for other reasons (eg family circumstances or ill health) who still have the potential to succeed academically, and a lot for who a bit more focus on them in school would give them grades access courses at college. Plus there is learning for learning sake; to have a better understanding of the world about us, to be able to better assess and critically appraise information they receive, to be better able to advocate for themselves (including in writing), to better compare financial products or quotes for services, to give their own children a boost in learning.

if 51% of the cohort gets a "better" result, that works for you, and the 49% for whom it didn't work can suck it up?

As opposed to what? You have not given the comparator.

Do you mean 51% achieve better than under a comprehensive system and the rest achieve the same?

@CatchingtheCat As opposed to what? You have not given the comparator.

I did give the comparison. I have quoted ad nauseam a Sutton trust study comparing 11+ vs GCSE results.

You said "better" without clarifying what you mean by that

There are also studies suggesting that selective education does not improve results, like this from 2023 and this one from 2018, which concluded

The article derives measures of chronic poverty and local socio-economic status segregation between schools, and uses these to show that the results from grammar schools are no better than expected, once these differences are accounted for. There is no evidence base for a policy of increasing selection

If you want to determine whether the 11+ is a reasonable selection test then comparing the 11+ to GCSEs is not the relevant comparison. A relevant comparison would be to randomly allocate half a cohort to the 11+ selection criteria and half to some other form of selection criteria and seen which group get the best outcomes in terms of GCSEs, or some other more useful societal outcome measure than GCSEs, at the schools attended by both those selected for grammar and those not.

Or we could compare outcomes of grammar to comprehensive systems in children with similar demographics. But that would not be an assessment of the 11+

@CatchingtheCat If you want to determine whether the 11+ is a reasonable selection test then comparing the 11+ to GCSEs is not the relevant comparison

Not sure I agree. Regardless, would you be happy with studies which compare results normalising by socio-economic factors, like the ones I had already mentioned?

Again: this 2018 study concluded that

The article derives measures of chronic poverty and local socio-economic status segregation between schools, and uses these to show that the results from grammar schools are no better than expected, once these differences are accounted for. There is no evidence base for a policy of increasing selection

This from 2023 :

we compare pupils’ academic performance in a selective system with that in a non-selective system using large-scale national data from England. The results show no evidence of a superior academic effect of selective systems on pupils’ academic outcomes. While the general results for the effects of the two systems reveal neither system to be superior, an internal pattern implies negative results from the selective system, from which high performers suffer. The findings collectively imply that maintaining selective systems for compulsory education is unlikely to generate any substantial academic gain.

It Is reasonable to compare grammer school system to the comprehensive system, but not to draw any conclusions about the 11+ as a selection test from that. There are too many confounding variables.

For your next task, you could consider whether a high UCAT score makes a good doctor….

By way of context, I do not live, and have never lived, in a Grammar school area. I did go to a poor comprehensive though - probably as ‘true’ a comprehensive as you can get as was the only one in a small town with a very mixed demographic of wealthy and deprived areas. You could tell which were the wealthy areas by seeing where the vast majority of A level students lived.

@CatchingtheCat For your next task, you could explain why you think the 11+ is an appropriate and accurate selection test, and what would make you conclude it isn't. You still haven't done that. Odd, right?

It Is reasonable to compare grammer school system to the comprehensive system, but not to draw any conclusions about the 11+ as a selection test from that.

Not sure I follow. Are you saying that you agree with the conclusions of the two studies above (that selective schools make no difference once you normalise by socio-economic factors) but that the 11+ remains a valid test?

I am saying it is not possibly to determine whether the 11+ is a good selection test from the studies.