Newcomers to England who start a family are often slow to realise that one of the biggest factors in the Game of Life here starts with the 11-plus exam. If your children are at a school where anyone is sitting such exams, you may find – as I did – that your children want to have a go. You then realise, as Alan Bennett put it in The History Boys, that ‘the boys and girls against whom your child is to compete have been groomed like thoroughbreds for this one particular race’. And after the exam comes the interview. Another race.
As a parent, this process is hateful. The idea of someone passing judgment on so young a child is awful
Scots have nothing like it and I’m not sure many other countries do. The 11-plus is perhaps the world’s toughest test for children of that age. Software programs such as Atom can now predict, often with striking accuracy, how your child will fare. In theory, no preparation is needed for the interview. In practice, the most serious parents have been prepping their kids for years.
The teachers want to see if the child matches their exam result and will ask questions to test their peripheral knowledge. The issue is that many children of that age specialise in one-syllable answers and need to rehearse being expansive. Mumsnet, perhaps Britain’s most ferocious intelligence-gathering network, shares the kind of questions you can expect, as reported by its members.
There are staples. Favourite subject? What book are they reading? Then, up a notch to test the child’s ability to think on their feet. What does religion mean to them? If they were PM for a day, what would they change? There are also questions that would stump most adults. How would you describe yellow to a blind person? What business would you create if money was no object? How would early civilisations have coped without the number zero?
Prep schools ready pupils for this assault course, but my children went to a state primary and weren’t prepared for any of it. I’d say the 11-plus requires pupils to be about a year ahead of their peers – which means learning aspects of maths that they won’t be taught at school and vocabulary and writing techniques normally introduced at the age of 13. We sought to make up the distance with weekly tutoring, Atom tests to track progress, and a subscription to The Week Junior. Because the interview format is not at all intuitive to children, it needs to be practised, but not so answers sound rehearsed.
The intel from the ten-year-old Nicola Nelson? The most academic schools, she says, ask the easiest questions. She was prepared with answers for what she’d do as PM for a day but was instead asked about hobbies and her favourite subject. (PE and music, she replied, perhaps a bit too truthfully.) The art game seems common. Candidates are shown a picture and asked: what does this make you feel? (‘Confused,’ answered one boy I know when shown a photo of a beach, ‘because I thought this was supposed to be an interview.’ He got in.) Nicola was shown a picture of a dodo and asked to identify it.
She was then given a group exercise. Not part of the assessment, they said (of course not! Just for fun!). Three girls each had to pick a card; on the flipside was a picture. They were then asked to imagine making a device ‘that would change the world’ using two of the images. Nicola ended up with a pair of glasses and a pen. What would she do? Invent glasses that could write things in the mind, she said, and help people with dementia. Right answer? I have no idea.
As a parent, this is a hateful process. The idea of someone passing judgment on so young a child is awful; and the child feels the pressure, no matter how much they are told it doesn’t matter. I’m not sure potential can be gauged at the age of ten. I sometimes think of the 11-plus as a game for adults, with children as pawns. But in an academically selective system, perhaps there’s no other way.
One type of parent I spotted was a homegrown version of the Asian tiger mum – call them the British lionesses. These are highly skilled graduates who may be taking a career break from law or finance to devote ten years to Project Child. They are fully briefed on the 11-plus assault course and plan early, starting with mapping catchment areas before they buy a house. They line up tuition and go all-out on the worthwhile activities (sports, chess, music). Weekends are spent ferrying children from various activities or competitions: all fodder for the interview conversation.
Encouraging reading is the most important thing a parent can do, not just for the 11-plus but for school in general. No device has a fraction of the power of the book to nurture young minds, so it makes sense to hold out for as long as possible against smartphones. Two-thirds of children have them by the age of ten, and the peer pressure will be intense. If you succumb, set screen time limits.
There is, of course, no point in drilling a child to get into a school that will require them to move at the wrong pace. A friend of mine who has had a very successful career says his big break came when his parents took him out of the school he got into after intensive prepping for the 11+. He had drifted to the bottom of every class and felt discouraged. Being moved to a less academic school gave him back his confidence and eventually he went on to Cambridge.
These 11-plus tests will become easier in time. Lower birth rates mean the UK population for that age group is expected to fall 12 per cent by the end of the decade. This will mean less competition for the best schools, state and private. Slapping 20 per cent VAT on fees, as Keir Starmer intends to, will price out the lower-earning families. That could mean more demand for state grammars, which tend to get better results than private schools and do not have an entrance interview. It won’t be much comfort for the pupils swotting on Saturdays, but this is the intellectual Olympics for ten-year-olds: and they could be the last generation to be asked to compete.
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