Eleven Plus Hugs and Kisses

Do you remember the bit towards the end of Act II of Sleeping Beauty when the young prince, with some of his court, goes on a picnic to the forest? Gallison, the Prince’s aide, tells of seeing a stag. The Prince’s companions hurry away to join the hunt.

The Prince decides to stay – and dreams of romantic love.

The Lilac Fairy appears and shows him a vision of Princess Aurora – who is fast asleep. The Prince follows the Lilac Fairy to the palace where Aurora lies. He enters the palace and awakens her with a kiss.

The magic spell is broken.

There can not be one single eleven plus parent who has not read this story to their much loved child.

There may be a few parents, when they give their child a final good night kiss, who wish that something would happen to awaken the true potential. How do parents know that their child has `true potential’? There are signs.

He or she is possibly more interested in science than most other subjects.

It is feasible too that he or she knows more than other children of the same age. This could be possibly because he or she has read a much wider range of books.

He or she is often `hard’ on any potential failings on the part of the teacher – and is quite capable of expressing his or her views on schools in general and teachers in particular.

There may be sweeping visits to a wide range of after school activities – until something strikes a chord.

The parents of an eleven plus child will be vitally interested in any progress – and will be able to recall each and every single social, emotional, intellectual and physical event.

Of course eleven plus papers will be coped with easily. Sometimes it may look as if the drive towards excellence is slipping – but this may be down to test fatigue rather than a temporary lessoning of ability.

At times too it may look as if motivation is a problem. This may be very difficult for parents to cope with.

But parents are wiser than their children. Parents know that they must be confident and not force confrontation. Every parent knows that what ever has happened during the day will be forgotten after the last good night hug and kiss.

Eleven Plus Children Need Cats

I read an amazing article yesterday but did not comment on it as I needed a bit more information. I have spent the last twenty four hours trying to find out just how many cats there are in the country that eleven plus children may be able to adopt.

According to an article by Matthew Moore in The Daily Telegraph, on the 6th of February 2010, scientists felt that cat owners were more intelligent than dog owners. Does this mean that you need to get hold of a cat before your child can pass the eleven plus?

The article does not claim that cats are more intelligent than dogs. It simply found that there were more university graduates in homes where cats rule supreme.

Do homes with cats succeed with eleven plus verbal reasoning tests? If any one has ever heard of a cat answering an eleven plus question - I would be more grateful if you would be kind enough to share this with me.

We do know that a dog will sit beside your child while he or she is doing eleven plus work - but a cat will sit on it.

We remember Mark Twain who maintained that cats are more intelligent than people believe and they can be taught any crime. (I am sure this is not true of any eleven plus children.)

Finally, and for this we have to be grateful to Alfred North Whitehead, "If a dog jumps into your lap it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing it is because your lap is warmer."

Eleven Plus Standardisation

If a select number of children receive help towards the eleven plus examination does it mean that the norms associated with eleven plus examinations are meaningless? After all when the tests were standardised did the cohort of children who made up the sample of children include children who had been offered top quality extra tuition?

If any coaching is given towards a test then the norms must become suspect and possibly unsatisfactory. Years ago the promotion of teachers, and the payment of teachers, was based around the results their children obtained in school. Think of the outcry today if a group of children in one class were given extra tuition – and so helped the school teacher with promotion and / or payment!

Familiarity with a test must lead to artificially high results. We hear of eleven plus teachers who base their whole teaching around one particular type of paper. Will this help their charges to be among the elite? It is very hard to call.

A cry must then be heard. What is the actual potential of the children compared with those the eleven plus tests were standardised on? Parts of verbal reasoning tests rely on good reading and vocabulary skills. Children who do not come from homes where parents read are possibly handicapped. A boy or a girl who has been read to from an early age and has a desire to read for reading’s sake is likely to enjoy grappling with many parts of verbal reasoning tests.

When eleven plus results are published schools quite rightly take lots of the credit for the number of children who pass. It is likely that an eleven plus candidate, who has been offered the very best of eleven plus opportunities, and has, therefore, benefited from good teaching at school and at home, will enjoy the whole build up towards the eleven plus.

We are not told about the standardisation of the actual eleven plus tests – other than knowing that standardisation is an effort to make the tests as fair as possible to all children. Perhaps in the final analysis we do not need to know about who the tests are standardised on. What we must be concerned with is that the content of eleven plus tests is becoming so predictable that some children must be force feed into trying to pass while other children must become no more than passive learners.

There may be a case for more transparency about the nature of the questions within the actual eleven plus examination – and more openness about who the tests were standardised on.

Eleven Plus Questions

The nature of the final eleven plus examination determines the organisation of the preparation for the examination. There is little value, for example, in an eleven plus child learning Mongolian – if Mongolian is not tested in the examination. (Looking at some eleven plus questions, however, makes one think, at times, that an eleven plus child may better off learning Mongolian than struggle through some poorly phrased questions.)

The eleven plus papers that children work through are really statements of the objectives of the examination. It is possible to be a good eleven plus teacher by teaching only to the eleven plus examination. It may be possible to be a better eleven plus teacher by teaching towards the examination – but also including work that has greater depth and purpose.

Most, but not all, eleven plus tests are multiple choice. If a school has been trying to encourage a child to show both understanding and the ability to generalise then the rigid eleven plus curriculum is likely to force some children down narrow paths.

The analysis of a number of eleven plus practice papers suggests that some elements of the eleven plus look only at facts and methods of solving problems. There is no place for a diagnostic eleven plus test on the day of the actual examination.

Some multiple choice eleven plus questions allow little opportunity to diagnose why a child has made a mistake. If a question asks for an answer in metres – and centimetres is selected then this could be as a result of a number of reasons.

It would be very difficult to mark vast numbers of essay or expository type questions which asked ten year olds to organise their thoughts and give reasons for their answers. This would, however, offer the potential to reward good teaching at school.

Think back to the days when you were at school and you were encouraged to write the General Paper. Your teacher would have reminded you that pupils who were taught to write good essays were also better at answering multiple choice questions.

If only elements of the eleven plus tests could examine general reasoning and judgement rather than relying solely on directing an eleven year old to learn a prescriptive 19 or 21 different types of reasoning questions.

Memo to the constructors of current Eleven Plus Papers:

“Could do better.”

Eleven Plus Ambition

You may care to ask your child why he or she really wants to become a doctor. After all most parents would swell with pride if their child stated that becoming a doctor was the most important reason why he or she wanted to go to a grammar school. It may be possible that parents will have more influence on their child’s career choice than the teachers at primary school.

The first reason that a child may offer in support of the `I want to be a doctor’ statement may be `for the money’.

A child may come into contact with someone in the family who is associated with medicine. “My mum is a doctor, so is my dad.”

An interest in science may trigger a desire to study medicine.

In some cases it may be the pressure of ambitions parents who will want their child to join a most prestigious profession.

There will have been characters in history like Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie who could possible have stimulated an interest in medicine.

It could be that the school a child attends plays a part in the choice of a career when senior school is reached.

One thing, at the eleven plus stage that is very clear, is that it is the high achievers who will have most chance of becoming doctors.

Noses to the grindstone please.

The Eleven Plus and Poorer Families

In 1965, when a few of our current eleven plus parents may have been but a twinkle in the eye, the Public Schools Commission was set up under Sir John Newsom. The august body was tasked with finding the best way of integrating the public schools with the state system.

The Secretary of State felt that the government intended that public schools should make the greatest possible contribution to the country’s educational needs. There was a strong desire, in some quarters, that public schools should be progressively open to boys and girls irrespective of the income of their parents.

In the autumn of 1967 the commission was asked to extend its review to look at the direct grant grammar schools.

If fees were paid by the local authorities, the commission felt that it would take only about seven years to overcome the `socially divisive’ nature of schools.

By all accounts this was not a popular solution. One fear was that the `maladjusted’ would be favoured – and thus gain entry to the hitherto elite schools.

There are scholarships today that the very brightest and the most capable can apply for. The scholarship examinations that children meet today are often demanding and are set to stretch.

The present fee barrier, however, compels many schools to attract the children of those most financially able. The grammar schools were intended, in the early days, to provide opportunities to bright children whose parents were less well heeled.

In the great rush towards the eleven plus the children of parents who can afford books, papers, tuition, broadband and computers are probably going to do better in an eleven plus examination than children from poorer families. In today’s world this is patently unfair.

The content of verbal reasoning papers should be examined to try to ensure that the questions are not biased towards children who have ability – but not the opportunity to study on a level playing field. In my work I meet clever children who could struggle with some questions on a verbal reasoning test because their vocabularies are not strong enough. The must be more to passing an eleven plus examination than having a strong reading vocabulary.

If, however, a strong reading vocabulary is a key component – then some parents should be urged to encourage their child to read as much as possible.

Eleven Plus Results

There have been great technological advances in recent years. Many different tests and papers have been developed and a whole industry has built up around the eleven plus examinations. The tests and exercises, however, look only at restricted aspects of entry methods to grammar schools and do not look at the whole child. A verbal reasoning test result can not be used to gauge if a grammar school child will turn out to be lazy and unwilling.

Tests are used to rank children in a particular order. Testing at the eleven plus level can not measure loyalty or perseverance. After all, eleven plus tests results only report on a child’s progress at a given point in time.

We have girl who is with us working towards her SATs tests. When she was working on pre eleven plus mathematics back in July and August she found the work hard. She was a little more confident as the examinations approached. She can now tackle almost anything that is thrown at her. For her the eleven plus examinations arrived about 120 days too early.

We had a different girl with us last year. She failed the eleven plus by one mark. Her father wanted to appeal. Her mother, however, did not want her daughter to go to the grammar school. The school were willing to support an appeal – but the mother maintained that if her daughter had been meant to go to grammar school she would have passed first time.