Girls disadvantaged in eleven plus

[Leapyearlover]

I was talking to my aunt today and for some reason the topic of grammar schools came up. She said that in the 60s and possibly later the mark needed to pass was lower for boys than for girls as it was deemed more important for boys to get into grammar schools and have a career. Is this really true?! I've never come across it before but I was speechless!

Here, the boys grammar uses a different test to the girls/mixed grammars (the two boys schools use GL assessment and the others use CEM uni of Durham).

True in Nottingham,I was told some years later that boys would go on to be the family breadwinners and womens pay would be the family 'pin money'.
In 1957.
Secondary Modern school was the alternative and GCEs were not on offer for the most part ,girls saw their future in factory,shop work,lower level clerical until they got married and boys were generall y destined for apprenticeships.

I recently heard that there are about six times as many full scholarships to private schools for boys as girls.
Nobody planned it that way, it's just the boys schools tend to be older and richer.

Check out the current gender disparity in University attendance. It may make you feel better.

I’m shocked if this is true having never heard it before but have no reason to doubt it. Suppose it makes sense they want a gender balance even if means having to drop / increase the pass rate to maintain it.

Didn’t think it would be girls being set the higher pass rate. Was always lead to believe boys were ‘better’ at exams (don’t blame me for the female / male brain chat) because they tweaked the courses to increase the importance on coursework rather than exams which boys were supposed to better at.

However the 11 plus isn’t like a learn by rote or beneficial to crammers and more of an IQ test

Yes it is true. I took the 11 plus in 1954 and I can assure any doubters it is true.

Check out the current gender disparity in University attendance. It may make you feel better. This.

Also, for many years now we have had affirmative action for women, or at least a push for them, in many spaces. Same for BAME.

It's hard to get right. And yes, in the 50s and 60s there was an expectation of men being the breadwinners. We have moved a long way from those times.

I doubt we can ever get it 'right'. Slightly off topic, but look at the trouble Harvard Princeton etc is in now - Asians have to score higher than either Black or White students to gain entry.

Interesting thread on 11+ sex differences. I would be interested to hear how it works today. Especially in areas where there is one pass score for a whole set of grammar schools.

I think you make a slightly different point yeahyeah when you talk about what happens for adults. Affirmative action ( very us term) usually follows structural discrimination. American laws were actually preventing women and African Americans from having the same opportunities as white males.
For anyone interested I strongly recommend the film 'on the basis of sex' that listed all the things a woman couldn't do by law in 60s America. We all should be familiar with Jim Crow laws that prevented African Americans from accessing opportunities.

In the UK we mainly have positive action and which means towards encouraging participation from under represented groups rather than positive discrimination. All women shortlists is a rare example of positive discrimination in the UK.

I was told the same by a lecturer at college who was doing his ma in further education.

Might explain why my DM didn’t get through. She went in the sixth form though and could have gone to university.

I was definitely told this when I took the 11+ in the late 80s. The reason given was, as someone said upthread, that boys supposedly develop later.

Bizarrely I’ve never questioned it until now. It’s an outrage. I wonder what effect it has had on the number of women entering the professions?

I don't actually mind 50/50 boys and girls to grammar if boys do develop later than girls. I would just like them to be upfront about it.

yes its true-i was one of thoses girls. not only that, in the months before the 11 plus, the boys of the class received extra maths, science and english classes while the girls carried on with their sewing classes. this was 1965

Not sure how girls were disadvantaged in the 11 plus as a percentage of each went to selective schools. In my home town a Boys Grammar School was closed and replaced with a coed school to ensure numbers were equal.

Isn't the "boys are maturing academically slightly slower" a fact? (I've just realized I was brought up to believe it and I've never questioned it).

In my eyes the idea that going with demographies and wanting top 5% boys and 5% girls isn't completely off. Of course there are issues with implementation - not applying the same for opportunities afterwards, not applying the same if girls are disadvantaged, ...
It just seems that british boys got a kind of affirmative acction - which would be make it a nice factoid to use at some online discussions.

Zombie thread (though pleased to see I was on this way back in 2019)

Not hearsay. In the London borough where I lived as child the pass mark for girls was higher than for boys. Not because boys needed a career but because of the paucity of grammar school places for girls. I have a higher degree and failed my 11+ but my 2 brothers (one of whom also went to university) both passed, they are/were not noticeably more intelligent than me - but they, I presume, had access in their school to the A stream which taught how to pass the 11+ whereas I was in the B stream (and my teacher apologised to my mother that he had not pressed for me to go into the A stream) because afaik I was born with a cleft palette. The result of this was a severe speech impediment as a child and at one of my primary schools I was put in the remedial reading group until my mother protested, having taught me to read at 4 (with Noddy). This history followed me, however, and in my new school aged 8 I was put in the B stream and constantly monitored for my reading ability (I suspect confirmation bias played a part in this). This is one reason I get furious when told that DC with speech impediments cannot be taught phonics because they can't pronounce the letters. This is utter nonsense, it doesn't matter how you say the word, can you read it and know what word it is? But the 11+ pass mark story is not nonsense, my borough was known for it.

My local grammar is mixed sex and the only grammar school in the city. It is therefore highly competitive.This year they have used a different format for the entrance test to previous years ( it is all on-line now) and it is one in which speed of response is important - as the more questions answered correctly the higher the overall score - obviously.

This year the succesful boys outnumber the girls by three to one. Most other years it has been fairly balanced between boys and girls, or even girl heavy.
Some parents expressed disquiet about this and after analysis it seems that the speed factor favoured the boys - and next year there will be measures to rectify this to an extent.

My granddaughter got in....but then my daughter coached her on speed of response as well as all of the language and maths skills required.Alternative choices of school for girls in the city are better than for the boys, so I imagine that fewer girls may have sat the test in the first place. Some parents definitely want single sex for their daughters.

You do often notice that in cities/boroughs where there is both a girls and a boys grammar school, the girls' school inevitably does better in terms of results.

I was told this in the late seventies by a statistician. He said the reasoning was that boys develop later. I remember thinking that if it had been the other way round, girls developing later, no-one would have bothered to do anything about pass levels.

It probably is true that boys develop later. Didn't they do better in A levels this year but worse in GCSE's?

Maybe this is a little bit like August born kids (rightly IMO) being given a few marks' headstart over September born peers.

"In the London borough where I lived as child the pass mark for girls was higher than for boys. Not because boys needed a career but because of the paucity of grammar school places for girls."

The same with the city where I grew up. There were two boys grammar schools but only one girls grammar school. Each school had roughly similar numbers of pupils.

partly more boys' grammar schools

There were also far fewer Oxbridge places for women until the 70s, so it would make sense if entry were more competitive for women there too.

Yes, it is true. My mother passed the 11 plus but there were far fewer places for girls from her village junior school to go to the girls' grammar school than there were for boys to go to the boys' grammar(s). A local benefactor had set up a fund to pay for any girls who had passed but didn't get a place at grammar school to go to a 'clerks college' in a nearby town to be trained for a secretarial or clerical career. My grandparents turned down the offer of a funded place there for my mother to have a better education because her older brother had failed the 11 plus and they felt it was fairer for both children to attend a secondary modern school (as it was then called - pre-comprehensive education).

My mother left school to work in a factory at 15 so didn't get any qualifications. She was very bright as a teenager and involved in the community and the post-war peace movement. She returned to college when she was 35 and took loads of different courses, but never really got over the feeling of failure from not going to grammar school - despite having passed the exams.