Although the
11-plus exam was my entrance to the next stage of my education, I was joined in the next two years by students who had just failed the
11-plus but now joined us because of lack of applications by some who had passed earlier.
The dreaded
11-plus also increases stress and worry.
Meanwhile, along at the secondary modern school, a lot of very able and intelligent girls who hadn't made it through the
11-plus were regarded there as high-fliers, and regularly out-performed our B streamers, achieving seven or eight O-levels.
Grammar schools might work in our large cities, but most certainly not in rural areas without other outlets for those who fail the
11-plus.
In the early 1960s, a headmaster told my mother it was not what you did on the day of the
11-plus that counted, but what the teachers thought of a particular pupil.
I was genuinely pleased that many of my primary school classmates passed the
11-plus and gained access to a local grammar school.
Margaret Thatcher was a supporter of grammar schools but had recognised that the
11-plus had probably lost the Tory party the 1964 General Election and Bradford became the first English City to abolish selection at
11-plus for its maintained schools.
Supporters argue that grammars increase life chances for workingclass children who pass the
11-plus. But critics say selection does little for the greater number who fail and who go on to the more practical "secondary modern" schools.
There are two unofficial replacement systems for the
11-plus in operation.
A terrible shame and, incidentally, even
11-plus failures had a chance of redemption at 13-plus to join us at the grammar school, which recognised that not all pupils develop at the same age.
In Scotland, the qualifying exam or "quali", similar to the English
11-plus, was abolished in 1957.
That proved there was no appetite to scrap the
11-plus, the Education Secretary added, despite his recent revelation that he was "bitter about selection".
That proved there was no appetite to scrap the
11-plus, he added, despite his recent revelation that he was "bitter about selection".
Langerbrugge's machine--the world's largest, with its
11-plus meter wire width and design speed of 2000 meters/min--was started up after a March 2005 rebuild.
During his
11-plus years as artistic director of New York City's Public Theater, Wolfe first commissioned Lackawanna as a one-man show by actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who also happens to be Nanny's real-life surrogate son.
