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 Everyone is talking of the impact of selection at the 11+ as if that is the only point of selection and that selection only applies in a few council areas. Selection is much broader than that and takes place in nearly every school across the country - at sixth form. If you don’t have the grades to study A levels, how many school offer much by way of a range of alternatives? How many are forced into college.

I think you are conflating separate points.
Maybe colleges are not adequate for certain kids and maybe they should be structured differently or there should be other alternatives. That I don't know.

But this doesn't mean that selections for A-levels is wrong.
A-levels are advanced qualifications. The jump from GCSE to A-level is significant.

You will struggle to study maths or physics at A-level (let alone further maths) if you barely scraped a 4 at GCSE. Similarly, you will struggle studying A-level French if you only had a 4. Etc.

Some sixth-forms may be too strict, because some admit only those with an 8.
In some areas there may not be enough sixth-forms, so the existing ones become too competitive (eg you could do a-levels with a 7 but there are so many applications that only those with an 8 get in).
But these are separate points, they don't mean that selection is wrong.

I am talking about selection for sixth form. Why should sixth form be A levels and not more qualifications accessible to those without good GCSEs?

My mum failed hers but added six inferior children to the gene pool anyway.

I took and passed the 11 plus in 1966. In my primary school at the time there were 4 classes of children. There were about 40 odd kids in my class (A class) about the same in the B class and then 2 smaller classes of kids who needed a bit of extra attention. Most of the kids in my class passed and another 2 from the B class. There were 2 options for grammar school in our town, 1 co-educational and 1 each girls and boys only. There were kids from all kinds of backgrounds at the co-ed I went to, it wasn't elitist at all. (I think the single six schools were probably a bit more elitist to be fair). I also had lots of friends from out of school who went to the local secondary modern and a lot of them did just as well as I did in the long run. We all did 'O' levels and anyone at the secondary moderns who did well enough and wanted to do 'A' levels could join the 6th form at one of the grammar schools. There were also kids who joined our school in what would now be the equivalent of Year 9 after taking the 13 plus which was available to anyone who had failed 11 plus who wanted to have another go later. The system went comprehensive a few years after I left in the early/mid 1970's.

No. Smaller academic schools suit some children.

I went to a grammar school (in London just before they were abolished) and that was originally founded as a girls’ charity school. Many of those schools have a long history and it is incorrect to say that they represented part of a eugenics movement.

One of my children went to a grammar school, one to a comp with streaming. The latter (Holland Park School that bastian of fashionable comprehensive education) DID write off lower achieving children. Children were also made up to line up in assembly in order of their parents’ occupation. Children who were non academic were punished and written off. Hardly egalitarian.

If it’s about race, how come a large proportion of the (so called) super selective grammar my daughter attended were non white?

@CatchingtheCat
Those who don't have the grades (or the willingness) for A-levels can do B-TEC, T-levels and other courses. In theory also apprenticeships, in practice I'm not sure how many apprenticeships there are.

@Fatcatsinspats Sorry to hear about your child's experience at Holland Park School. Those academies like Holland Park School and Mossbourne represent everything that's wrong with the current system, where unaccountable headteachers focus too much on academic results. I posted about it last year.

As for race, I have already answered more than twice: I am not saying that non-white kids are all penalised today, but that the eugenicists who created the 11+ considered non-whites inferior.

Of course it wasn’t about race. In the 1940s there were more schools than there were black people of all ages in the UK.

The church schools in central London, i.e St Marylebone, Cardinal Vaughan, Greycoats, Oratory etc are also socially selective. Do you think schools should stop selecting on the basis of (parents) religion too?

Below is a fairly typical range of options for a state sixth form. What about pupils with less than five GCSEs of the required grade? There is also considerably less choice for pupils not able to study A levels.

the 11 plus was a good way for clever working class children from poor families to be given opportunities that were only available to children who could pay for education.
whats wrong? Did you fail the 11 plus? because a whole sale swallowing of Marxist claptrap does not indicate an exceptionally acute brain.

Having read your links, it puts you firmly in tin-foil-hat territory.

His research was based around the heredity of intelligence. A worthwhile hypothesis. His research was flawed (and possibly faked) but has been replicated with similar results so not unnoteworthy.

Whether you directly said 11+ = eugenics or not is irrelevant. You've clearly implied it with your thread title, pulling the tin-foil-hat firmly in place.

They are not selecting children because of their social status though. That - as you seem keen to keep saying - is a straw man.
The children are selected because of their academic achievements and a % of those children are from more affluent families in certain areas. Certainly in my area where I have taught for over 30 years, which is one of the poorest areas in the North West, the most academically successful students are from Asian backgrounds, closely followed by Black African backgrounds, the vast majority of whom are from less affluent families. The biggest influence seems to be the value the parents of those children place on education. If we did have 11+ exams, these would be the children who would ‘pass’.

Do you realise how offensive the phrase ‘non-whites’ is? Who are these ‘non-whites’? What is their heritage? Are they all the same? Is a ‘non white’ child born into a wealthy Nigerian family on a par with a ‘non white’ child born to a single mum fleeing Syria living in an HMO whilst awaiting a decision whether to grant asylum?

Unfortunately selection at 11 means throwing the rest on a heap, my dd was barely reading chapter books at 11, seriously behind but something clicked and she got A’s at a level, thank goodness we lived in a comp area!

The percentage of 11-16 year olds in grammar schools is negligible in the greater scheme of things.
When you start looking at elite unis and where the kids come from then the selective grammar schools may look more significant. But let’s not forget one very important fact which is that a lot of them close to double their intake in Sixth Form and actually cream off a lot of higher achiever from lots of different types of schools. And this is where the confusion I think is coming in.

Absolutely @FairKoala. Me and my friend lived on the same street. Her dad was a business man and owned some bakeries. Her grandparents lived across the street and had money. My mum was a widow and ran a small holiday guest house. I passed the 11 plus and my friend didn't. My cousin passed and her next door neighbour failed. Both their mothers ran holiday guest houses and both their fathers went out to work. There were plenty of children in my year who passed and lived in council houses.

@mamagogo1 - well done to your DD! How did she do in her KS2 SATS out of interest?

This. I scored highly in the 11+ and went to the local grammar in the 1970s despite being one of 6 in a FSM family, with a f who didn't believe in the education of women.

I had no coaching. I was shown a couple of previous papers the week before, by my primary teacher so I knew roughly what to expect but that was all. Questions were reasoning, understanding of written paragraphs, patterns and logic, against the clock. It tested the ability to focus and to respond quickly.

Our school certainly wasn't socially selective, or I and my siblings wouldn't have got in.

Anecdata from 1966. My small village primary school was located in extreme west Cornwall with a catchment about eight miles in diameter. There were four classes of 30-40 for all the children between 5 and 11, in some years only three. The work available locally was day fishing, farming and quarrying, with flower-picking and tourism work (for women mostly) seasonally. No one was wealthy, hardly anyone was even middle class, and only the local doctor and clergy would have passed for professional. Even my headteacher was not degree educated. It was 100% white. Even so, a handful of children passed the 11+ each year and everyone took it. It was as close to a peasant society as the UK still had post-ww2.

Yes, but that is a completely separate topic.

The British Humanists lobby on the topic; they were instrumental in defeating in court the London Oratory's policy of prioritising families which "contributed to the church" - which meant financial donation, a criterion which was ruled discriminatory and illegal.

State-funded schools which discriminate based on faith are an abomination, which would be unconstitutional in many other countries.
We would never accept hospitals which discriminate based on faith - why we accept schools which do so remains beyond my comprehension.
That sometimes the land belongs to a church is irrelevant: we would never accept an arrangement whereby a church lets the NHS use its land for a hospital, as long as the hospital priorities patients of that faith.

Now of course the usual lot will attack me because I am aggressive, don't respect religion, and because there are bigger problems. Yawn...

@BusyExpert whats wrong? Did you fail the 11 plus? because a whole sale swallowing of Marxist claptrap does not indicate an exceptionally acute brain.

Ah, yes - personal insults and offenses: the last resort of those who know they have lost the argument. May I ask what would be "Marxist claptrap"?

• That the 11+ is rooted in eugenics is a historical fact.
• That Ceryl Burt was a eugenicist is a historical fact. He was a member of the British Eugenics Society and wrote on the Eugenics Review
• There is complete consensus among academics that he falsified his research.

Tell me, which of these proven historical facts would be "Marxist claptrap"?

Oh, wait, maybe you are referring to the part where I said I despise leftist extremists, and I called out the leftists who, in California, cancelled high school classes in advanced calculus because not enough black and Latino students were taking them?

@blinkblinkblinkblink His research was based around the heredity of intelligence. A worthwhile hypothesis. His research was flawed (and possibly faked) but has been replicated with similar results so not unnoteworthy.

Ehm, no. Just no. His hypothesis was that intelligence was only innate and unaffected by the environment. Tell me, which modern research would have "replicated" his and confirmed that the environment has zero effect? Note that this doesn't mean we all have the same intelligence.

When his research wasn't confirming his prejudice, he fabricated it all. There is academic consensus on this.
Oh, and let's not forget that he was a classicist who for some reason decided he could study psychology with no formal training in psychology nor science in general.

Karl Pearson was a bastard racist and eugenicist , but he was also a brilliant mathematician, one of the founders of modern statistics, whose contributions remain crucial to modern science. One can despise the person while still recognising the scientific achievements.

Burt deserves to be despised both as a person and as a scientist, because he was a fraud.

Whether you directly said 11+ = eugenics or not is irrelevant. You've clearly implied it with your thread title, pulling the tin-foil-hat firmly in place.

Mate, you are not exactly covering yourself in glory here.

I said that the origin of the 11+ is rooted in eugenics, and I stand by that statement.
I have explained and documented why.

If you want to deny historical facts, what can I say, you do you.

@Soontobe60 Do you realise how offensive the phrase ‘non-whites’ is? Who are these ‘non-whites’?

So, even if I was criticising racists, I still get criticised because my language is offensive.
Please enlighten me on the appropriate choice of words to convey that the eugenicists who devised the 11+ thought that people with a different skin colour were genetically inferior.

I think the biggest factor involved is what value families place on education.

I don't think there is an excuse anymore to say you need to be well off to get into a grammar school, particularly in our area. Our grammars all allocate places to children on FSM. Many tutors offer free or hugely reduced rates to those who cannot afford it. There are so many free resources on the Internet. I know a lady who tutors every week for free online to support those who can't afford it. Our local grammars run mock tests. They are free to those on FSM. One of the grammars wrote to all the local schools offering to tutor children who showed potential but did not have the means. The uptake was abysmal. I know of a few families in our local area who having working class jobs, but whose children go to grammar. On the flip side I had a parent of a bright boy who was offered free tutoring say. " Why would I want to put him through that when he can go to the local comprehensive?" She does have a point, but then why not let those who do want to go, go?

@Travelmad777 One of the grammars wrote to all the local schools offering to tutor children who showed potential but did not have the means.

That's good to hear. I mean, I still have reservations on the fact that 10 is too young for this kind of selection, and that those who excel in one area only are penalised, but at least what you describe limits the impact of different incomes.

However, not all areas are like that.

@Soontobe60 They are not selecting children because of their social status though. That - as you seem keen to keep saying - is a straw man.

I am not familiar with the North West. But it is evident that, in the selective and partially selective schools in London, poorer kids are under-represented.

There have been threads here on Graveney, a partially selective state school in SW London, where many people said that the difference between the selective set and the rest is evident: call it class, call it socio-economic background, I hope the gist is clear.

Queuing for a test for partially selective places, all the other parents in the queue were talking about were private school fees and second homes. It was unreal.

Free school meals is an imperfect metric, but is a decent proxy for socio-economic status, which is why the Sutton Trust uses it in its research (eg on "selective comps").

My point is that the 11+ system favours the smart kids who can get extra help (namely tutoring), and that this is reflected in the lower % of kids on free school meals you see in the selective and partially selective schools in London.

I fully agree that the value the parents place on education is key.
But isn't it odd that it tends to be so strongly correlated with income, as proven by the percentages on free school meals?

A teenager can be expected to go to the library even if their parents don't care about education. You cannot really expect a 9-10 year old to do the same.

So, again, this system won't favour the rich kids who score 10%, no.
But, between a bright poor kid who scores 70% untutored, and a bright non-poor kid who scores 65%, the latter will be favoured because the family has the means to tutor him from 65% to 75%.

How else do you explain the correlation between selection and lower free school meals %?
Is your point that the families on FSM are more likely not to care about education? And, even if that's the case, is it fair to penalise the bright but untutored kids of the example above?