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 ).

I was happy to pay school fees for selective fee paying schools so in a sense paying to ensure the peer group was reasonably bright as teenagers tend to copy their friends, the weaker teenagers anyway so if you buy a peer group as it were who will all go to good universities and have high aspirations you probably do improve the chances of your child particularly if that child similarly has the academic ability to pass the exams needed for particular careers. Both my parents went to state grammar schools and became a teacher and a doctor (NHS consultant) respectively but they paid for us to go to private school (day school) as I have for my children.

On how we can test people that is always a can of worms. They used to have to reduce the scores of girls at 11+ as they did better than boys but they wanted equal numbers of grammar school (girls mature at a younger age than boys). For my profession (law) there are entirely multiple choice questions for SQE1 (the first post grad exam) now with loads of analysis of the results and who passes and who does not and it is quite an interesting exam. My own view is MCQ is not the best way to test potential lawyers on its own for that first post grade academic exam. page 6 -= 9 of this report on it gives some data about women v men etc sqe.sra.org.uk/docs/default-source/pdfs/reports/sqe1_jul2025_statsreport_final.pdf?sfvrsn=9538121d_3

@Blueblell , @lfgsjcskDJVKdksj I have already answered this.
I did not say that non-white kids are penalised today.
I said that the 11+ was designed a century ago by eugenicists who considered non-whites genetically inferior. See the difference?

I am well aware that white working class kids (especially boys) tend to be the most disadvantaged today.

And that the classification of kids for whom English is a second language, which schools track and publish, is meaningless, because it includes families of highly educated and successful foreign professionals, where parents may speak an excellent English (although non-native) and the kids may have been born here and speak excellent, native English.

I think it's not very intelligent to fail to appreciate the 11+ gave many children from disadvantaged backgrounds opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have had.

My mum was the first in her family not to work in a factory, all because of grammar school.

It may have changed over time and not be as useful as it once was, but don't ignore what it achieved in the past.

As a eugenicist, selecting for grammar schools doesn’t seem a particularly effective way for him to suggest to alter the population genetics. Especially as poorer people tended to have larger families.

@InMyShowgirlEra - you quoted my post. Are you saying I am telling porkies? If so, why?

Citing schools such as HBS as socially selective shows you do not really understand what is going on. The superselective grammar schools in London are all full of majority South Asian kids now, with parents who value hard work and education and most of the kids are actually really bright as well aka gifted.

“Socially selective” for most us us usually equates more with posh British upper and upper middle class white people, or at least, majority white, in what is still a majority white country. London is still around 54% white according to Census Data from 2021.

Another fun fact for you. Go google the amount of Indian CEOS worldwide now and look up their educational histories. A lot of them have worked their way up from more middle class and lower middle class backgrounds.
There is social mobility right there in front of us, in some ethnic groups via grammar schools. It is happening. I think it is a bit racist to not acknowledge it.

@CrimsonStoat So maybe we can say that the origin of the test was flawed and racist, nonetheless there may have been a period where it may have helped social mobility, but that period is now in the past.

If your mom were a working class child today, she would face intense competition from rich kids undergoing anything from 1 to 2 years of intense tutoring.

I suppose that, when your mum went to grammar school, tutoring wasn't such a large industry, and grammar schools were maybe less socially selective than they are now?

So OP the main gist of what I get you are saying is that we shouldn’t have selective secondary schools because a man associated with a test, which has been subject to assessment and change since his time, was racist?

Social mobility as a concept is increasingly problematic because it presupposes a betterment towards your parents generation. Which with a country and continent in slow terminal decline is somewhat difficult.
So what exactly is social mobility now? A betterment of educational levels vis a vis your parents? A relative betterment of “social status”?

It's more flexible. If you are a late bloomer or someone who struggles later you have the opportunity to move up or down sets in a comprehensive school but if you are put in an actual different school at 11 that's a lot harder.
Also not everyone has equal abilities across all subjects, so you might get someone who fails the 11+ but has great ability in some areas. Or a pupil who passes but has one real area of weakness. They'd probably benefit from being in very different sets for different subjects and there will be a wider range in a comprehensive.
Of course not everyone is the same and most people will be better off being taught alongside others with similar interests and abilities. I just think that 10/11 is too young to make a judgement and set it in stone, thus potentially creating a self fulfilling prophecy.

Crudely, more income.

when similar tests are used by psychologists, they cannot be administered too frequently, otherwise the results are biased.

This is incorrect. Google practice effects.

@Araminta1003 Citing schools such as HBS as socially selective shows you do not really understand what is going on. The superselective grammar schools in London are all full of majority South Asian kids now, with parents who value hard work and education and most of the kids are actually really bright as well aka gifted.

None of what you say contradicts my points.
The families you describe tend to be higher income families (which doesn't mean filthy rich, it simply means high enough not to have free school meals).
This is reflected in those schools having a much lower % of kids on free school meals.
Again: the crux of the argument is that bright kids born from parents who are poor or don't care are at a disadvantage, because the current system rewards a combination of innate talent + external help (like tutoring).

Like in the example I made: a bright poor kid might score 70% untutored. A bright but wealthier kid might score 65% untutored but 80% after a year of tutoring. The system doesn't reward raw talent but the combination of that + external help.

When I said socially selective I was thinking about income (see above), not race.

I don't follow what Indian CEOs have to do with anything. How are the professional outcomes of foreigners educated abroad relevant to the merits of the UK education system? Also, CEOs are presumably a tiny percentage of the population - hardly a valid sample to infer much.

@CatchingtheCat So OP the main gist of what I get you are saying is that we shouldn’t have selective secondary schools because a man associated with a test, which has been subject to assessment and change since his time, was racist?

People berate me for being aggressive, but what is a polite, non-aggressive way to challenge a ludicrous strawman argument, which can show only bad faith or a complete lack of text comprehension skills?

I said multiple times why I don't like this system. Did you even read it? Regardless of who created it:

• it favours those who are well-rounders, and who are so aged 10. It ignores that kids may mature at different paces and may have different abilities in different areas. A comprehensive school using set takes all of this into account
• results are a combination of talent + extra help (tutoring). So I may have a lower "untutored score than you, but, after a year of tutoring (which you cannot afford) I may score higher.
• This is evident when you look at the stats and see that academically selective schools always have a much lower % of kids on free school meals

If you are a late bloomer or someone who struggles later you have the opportunity to move up or down sets in a comprehensive school

This is often suggested but very hard in reality. Moving down is fine as you just cover material again. But moving up is very hard as not only do you need to be working above your current set, the set above has covered material you have not.

No.

PP said that in her area, the Head had final say over who went to the Grammar School and selected low-scoring children from wealthy backgrounds and refused high-scoring children from poor backgrounds.

I responded to PP saying it certainly wasn't true of the areas my family lived in in the 60s.

You responded to say that the same applied to your own relatives and their friends who went to Grammar despite being economically disadvantaged.

This cemented my opinion that the original PP was not telling the truth and Grammar Heads have never had the power to pick and choose children based on their economic background.

It's always been based on your 11+ scores- with a few very rare cases of a successful appeal for borderline cases if their Primary Heads provide a strong enough report.

People berate me for being aggressive, but what is a polite, non-aggressive way to challenge a ludicrous strawman argument, which can show only bad faith or a complete lack of text comprehension skills?

Just to remind you that the title you gave this thread was:

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

“It's always been based on your 11+ scores- with a few very rare cases of a successful appeal for borderline cases if their Primary Heads provide a strong enough report.”

And I think it has to be evidenced with actual school work done in school. The kind that also provides the basis of school reports as the kid has to produce the work in school, during the school day, not from eg homework. I would have thought that most state primary heads are inclined to appeal for children from poorer backgrounds that they know to be bright and not tutored, rather than the opposite.

OP also called the person a "posh twat". Yet says they aren't aggressive and don't have an agenda 🙄

@ParentOfOne you might also be unaware but a lot of tuition centres take on children recommended by their schools who have potential to pass and are on FSM. Some just attend the regular sessions and neither the tutor nor the other children are aware they're not paying, others attend group sessions specifically for FSM children.

By that logic, it's not FSM who are the most disadvantaged, it's the children just above FSM who still aren't well off enough to pay for tuition.

In any case, you can pick up a set of books from a charity shop for 50p each and do the exercises at home to the same effect. If neither the parents nor the children are interested in doing it then that's up to them.

@Sofarsogood2 It is absolutely correct. Research on practice effects tends to suggest that the improvement plateaus after a while; this may mean that practising for 18 months years might not make much difference vs practising for 1 year. It does not suggest that practice makes no difference. And that's the whole point, that the system rewards a combination of talent + external help.

@CatchingtheCat Just to remind you that the title you gave this thread was:
The 11+ was a eugenics test to weed out genetically "inferior" children, created by a classicist who falsified his research

So what? I also explained why, regardless of who created it, the current system remains flawed. You conveniently ignored those other points.

@ParentOfOne - social mobility means some betterment.
It can include eg a scholarship kid to a private school then making it big as banker and then sending their own kid to the most famous public school paying full fees. There was still social mobility.
It need not start at the free school meal level.
A child on FSM who has achieved 6-7 good GCSEs, that is social mobility. It may be more social mobility than above.

The kids in London superselective grammar schools from ethnic minority parents are taking several social mobility leaps, typically. A few rungs up actually. That is social mobility to me.

What would my agenda be? tell me, I'm curious.
Am I trying to sell something?
Am I trying to support my political movement?
Am I lobbying for a reform which would benefit my company?
Am I promoting a book, a youtube channel, a website?

Please do tell me what this agenda and what my sinister, ulterior motives would be.

If your focus is on children on FSM and improving their social mobility then you could do a whole lot better than hyperfocussing on the 5% of grammar schools left! That is literally all I am saying.

You can’t separate out the social factors influencing academic aptitude. That some children have an inherent advantage simply by luck of being born to parents with education, money, or both is undeniable. That doesn’t change the fact that those children should not be forced to achieve less than their full potential to equalize society.

Perhaps the 11+ isn’t the best measure, but that still doesn’t mean real differentiation should be scrapped.

Yes it does and even then it's really rare. The only time I've heard of it being successful is in extreme circumstances, like the child suddenly falling ill halfway through the test or something distressing happening in the exam hall.

Most appeals are fairly well off, paid for years of tuition and their child still missed the mark...of course they don't belong at Grammar.

Why so many parents would rather their child struggle at Grammar school than thrive at Comprehensive, I do not know!