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 ).

@CatchingtheCat So you dismiss all the evidence I have presented, including the conclusions of peer-reviewed academic publications. Hardly surprising, given the dogmatism shown here.

So, OK, let's assume for the sake of argument that all those studies are irrelevant. You still haven't explained what you think, and why. Is your position:

• that there are other studies which confirm the 11+ works; if so, which ones?
• that no study can confirm if the 11+ works, so we just cannot know? In which case why should society support something whose effectiveness cannot be proven?
• that you don't care what any study says, because your support for the 11+ is dogmatic and driven by ideology, not evidence?
• something else?

You haven’t produced any evidence about how effective the 11+ is though. You have said it isn’t highly correlated to GCSEs and you have produced a couple of studies (I didn’t click through to unknown links but taking your c&p paragraphs at face value) about the grammar versus comprehensive system not an assessment of the 11+. If you provide normal links I will look at the results of your peer-reviewed studies (conclusions are always the authors’ spin, it is the results that are important, especially when the conclusion uses words like ‘imply’).

An important phrase for you to consider is “confounding variables”.

I have described how a study could be designed to assess the effectiveness of the 11+, though admittedly it would take five years to give a result.

What it comes down to though, it not about effectiveness of the 11+ or grammars vs comprehensives. It is whether you think it is FAIR. Something the education system quite patently is not, regardless of the 11+.

@CatchingtheCat If you provide normal links I will look at the results of your peer-reviewed studies

With the greatest of respect, your are being beyond ridiculous. "Normal" links?

I have shared the links to two peer-reviewed publications from the website of Taylor and Francis, a publisher of scientific journals. Not from the blog of a random dude on the internet.

You don't accept the links from the website of a publisher of scientific journals, and demand "normal links"? It is hard to think you are arguing in good faith

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01425692.2018.1443432

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131911.2023.2240977

You can infer the DOI from the link itself (I trust you know what DOI is, right?)

Shocking how you have still not answered my most basic question: what is your opinion on the 11+, and why? What do you base this opinion on? Your silence on this point is deafening...

I dodged away for a few days but have been reading along. @CatchingtheCat raises fairness as a stumbling block and the OP suggests that the 11+ is not the same nationwide. Plymouth and Torquay have grammar schools, for which the intake is the top 25% or 250 per year of the 11+ filtered cream. We also have, in east Devon, Colyton Grammar which selects only the top 7-10%. The best Exeter junior schools (both state and private) know they will lose their cleverest students to Colyton at 11, if they really are clever. It's quite straightforward. Clever parents breed clever kids, and so Colyton is a bit of an aberration socially.

Sure. But my point is that a comparable environment can be achieved in a good comprehensive which has a diverse intake, then divides kids by ability over time.
A good well rounded comprehensive is an ideal to work towards. The concept might be worthwhile exploring but that's not what you are deep diving into on this thread. Currently I see schools that are often too big, overstretched with students on every end of the extreme; barely reading to ready to take on university texts, dysregulated to experienced at self study. I have family that live in a corner of Lambeth which is very much an inner city melting pot and not at all reflective of the general UK population it is overwhelmingly a deprived area of new immigrants with a smattering of very wealthy, not an area with a robust middle.

Can you deny that the 11+ test was created by an advocate of eugenics who falsified his research?
I don't think it matters who created this or how flawed the research, it is a remnant of the post WW2 ideology (and he wasn't the only person who held similar views or tweaked the data), obviously the exam itself has evolved and the questions are not the same as the questions asked in 1946 but part of the reason the exam remains is history, which I posted about earlier. Very few went on to post secondary and most went directly into a workforce and workplace of manual labor exiting school ready for employment at 16.

Can you deny that, regardless of the creator, there is still no scientific backing for the test?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41539-018-0019-8 Here is some research that might interest you and would back up why it's a helpful tool.

Can you show the scientific evidence for why 10 is an appropriate age to test kids?
Honestly kids are continuously tested. It really doesn't matter when you test them. In your view children in a good comprehensive school would be regularly tested (paper or otherwise) and equally moved (albeit not a different school, simply different classes). Children are tested upon entry to reception, then tested with phonics, and then continuously assessed thereafter, lots of testing reported on mn during year 7.

My Dad came from a very working class background passed the 11 plus in the 60s and went to Oxford with a full grant. There is absolutely no way he would have had those opportunities without the 11 plus the family wanted him to go into bricklaying like his Dad. It’s different these days though as most of the kids sitting the 11 plus have been tutored for several years at great cost to their parents

DS is in Year 7 at a superselective grammar school. He has already been to Astronomy, Physics and all sorts of academic extension clubs and talks given by former pupils who return to discuss eg their PhD they are doing at Cambridge and specific research products they have been invited to. I never told DS to go, he really wants to! Most of his former primary school friends would have zero interest in this kind of thing.
The local comprehensive offers none of this, albeit much larger, the kids are more interested in sports there and other types of clubs like wood work. DD is also in a superselective grammar and going to a lecture at LSE and I think another talk at UCL just next week and a number of her year group are going along. It is open to everyone but the kids in these schools are interested in this stuff. It is not because they were overtutored or because the parents are “pushing” them. You do not push at Sixth Form, they do want they want! In fact, even in Year 7 you are not there to tell them which clubs to go to.

GCSE results are only part of the picture, a small one at that. The schools do not have extra funding to put much on. It is done by the students. They decide who to invite. When they eventually go along to their Oxbridge interviews they have lots to talk about, it is a natural consequence of years of this.

did you read more than the abstract on both article? Because the research does say that there are benefits to selection but that it may not be worth the negative consequences to the remaining state schools.
not behind a pay wall and more recent this will be of interest to you.
Consequences of academic selection for post‐primary education in the United Kingdom: A systematic literature review - Cantley - 2025 - Review of Education - Wiley Online Library
Not only better grades but higher wages unfortunately it entrenches lack of social mobility. But statistically significant advantages to selection.

This was our experience. Lots of culturally enriching activities, nice kids, nice parents, good teachers, v. few behaviour problems, an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect- thats before we start on the academics.

I have moved my 9 year old from state to private recently. I have to laugh at any claims that the 11 plus is untutorable. She’s having regular reasoning lessons whereas in her state primary she wouldn’t have set eyes on any of the material. You can see loads of the questions assume a certain amount of general knowledge which in and of itself has a social bias. So I fully see that the 11 plus absolutely favours socio-economically advantaged kids.

However, I’m not sure GCSEs are necessarily the best measure to use in saying outcomes are no different. On paper, I was the classic ‘bright kid will do well anywhere’ in a rubbish comp getting a string of A*s. However, I hid my abilities and generally aimed for self-preservation. I had very low confidence as a result and I certainly wasn’t pushed but in hindsight can see I was clever enough to get away with it at gcse. An environment surrounded by like minded kids sounds like Disneyland in comparison to the day to day life in my comp. I would have got the same grades at a grammar as I did at the comp but I’d have had a much nicer time and probably been better prepared for a-levels.

@Bunnycat101 Sorry to hear about your experience. I have no doubt that there are plenty of state comps which level down to the minimum common denominator. Of course any parent who could choose between that and a grammar for a reasonably academic child would choose the grammar. That is not the point.

The point is that that's a false dichotomy. Those two are not the only possibilities. There are plenty of state comps which are NOT like that and which achieve good results by channelling every child towards the path that best works for them.

@BreakingBroken Thank you for the link. I'll read the review when I have a chance. For the moment, I have skimmed through the abstract, and, well, I am not sure that a review which reaches these conclusions contradicts much of what I have been saying:

when relevant student and school characteristics are controlled for, academic selection has a negligible overall effect on academic achievement relative to all-ability comprehensive post-primary education. The findings also indicate that there is negligible difference between the capacity of the two systems to promote intergenerational social mobility, but that academic selection potentially reinforces and further entrenches socioeconomic disparities in educational outcomes

“The findings also indicate that there is negligible difference between the capacity of the two systems to promote intergenerational social mobility”

So the comp system has failed to promote social mobility @ParentOfOne and you want to hassle parents even more and send the DC off to lottery based schools?

Time to accept that Education Policy has a minimal effect on social control/social mobility perhaps? In fact, all the control exercised centrally is putting a lot of kids and families and teachers off!!!

Well said 👏

Schools need to be able to get back to educating pupils instead of being cut price social services.

@Araminta1003 On admission by lottery: like I said, those who do not want a lottery system are not allowed to criticise buying into catchment. Are you OK with people buying a place at a good state school simply paying the premium for the houses closest to a school? What is your alternative? as ever, the answer is a deafening silence.

Your deflection is unbelievable. I could easily turn the question around: there is no proof that grammars promote social mobility, nor that kids do better at grammar, so why on Earth do you support that system?

Comprehensive means a lot of different things.
I have been adamant that I don't support the kind of comp that levels everyone down to the minimum common denominator.
That is not the only option.
There are many comps which do divide kids by ability, but over time, not based on an unscientific one-off stressful over-tutored test, and where kids flourish.

The dogmatic pro-grammar ideologues love to present a false dichotomy which is, well, just false. Levelling everyone down is not the only possible alternative to grammars.

No but it's where we end up every time eg Labour ending funding for IB , Latin programmes etc in state schools.

It always ends up in levelling down.

I live in a non-grammar area. Here are the GCSE results for the comprehensive state schools:

Grades 9-4 64.4%
9-7 17.1%

Vs National figures:
Grades 9-4 67.1%
9-7 21.7%

Now here are the average results for the independent schools in the same area:
95% of students achieving 9-4 grades
30% achieving 9-7 grades

Apparently the boys had a lower pass rate than the girls for the 11+??

😲

Because girls are, well, considered cleverer??

Is this the case

@twistyizzy You do you, but Latin is not the hill I'd die on.
If anything, mentioning Latin as proof of the government defunding schools (rather than one of the many more pressing issues) is one of those peak mumsnet out-of-touch moments!

Now here are the average results for the independent schools in the same area:
95% of students achieving 9-4 grades
30% achieving 9-7 grades

You mean to tell me that the schools which admit the richer and more academic kids do better in their exams? Wow, who would have every imagined... This is a revolutionary discovery! Call the Secretary of Education right now!!

Again, read all the previous studies on how, once you normalise for socio-economic factors, there is no conclusive evidence that grammar school kids do any better.

How to miss the point 🙄 as usual

oh gosh @twistyizzy
prompted me to look at the school my dgd is attending (i'm not in the uk and wonder if i'm reading it right)
the school has published their cumulative %
9-4 98.3%
9-7 77.2
out of a total exams taken 843, there were 12 exams with a result of 3 and 1 with a 2

@ParentOfOne all the studies show that selective school children DO BETTER by a relatively small % but all research say that the negative effects on the remaining schools outweighs the benefits (according to them).
your argument would still imply that socioeconomic factors are the greatest determinant to school success.

and again none of this grade bs matters when one of the driving factors to grammar and independent schooling is simply a better school environment.

I agree

@BreakingBroken all the studies show that selective school children DO BETTER by a relatively small % but all research say that the negative effects on the remaining schools outweighs the benefits (according to them).

relatively small... so small that the review you quoted calls it negligible.

your argument would still imply that socioeconomic factors are the greatest determinant to school success.

This is pretty self-evident. Realistically, a good school system can hope to limit these differences, but overcoming them completely doesn't seem very realistic

“all the studies show that selective school children DO BETTER by a relatively small % but all research say that the negative effects on the remaining schools outweighs the benefits (according to them).
your argument would still imply that socioeconomic factors are the greatest determinant to school success.”

Is there a study that shows whether grammar school is more likely to lead to elite uni (Oxbridge) and why? Because the studies focussing on formulaic GCSE results I cannot take seriously, sorry, I do not mean to offend, but we know the truth from real life experience.