Did you fail your 11+ exam?

I never knew what it was, or that i wastaking it.

I was at an army school in Singapore, Just arrivd there in the summer term from a similar school in Hong Kong.

A week or two into term a teacher put his head around the classroom door and said 'Anyone here not taken the Moray House?' I put my hand up to ask 'what is theMoray House?' 'Right', he said, 'You had better come with me'.

So I was taken to a classroom with half a dozen other children and did some tests: two maths, one English and Verbal reasoning and three weeks later my parents got a letter to say that I would be going to Alexandra Grammar in September. My parents were delighted, but it all still meant nothing to me. I worked it all out when I started at the school.

When we returned to England, all Education Authorities recognised that passing the 'Moray House' meant you had passed the 11+ and I went to the local grammar school.

11+ wasn't around in Scotland when I went to secondary school as such, although we did have an IQ test in the last year of primary school which identified likely candidates for a fairly local private school. Secondary school was comprehensive. At the end of first year certain pupils were offered Latin in second year. That fixed their choices thereafter. I took Latin and subsequently french and German but wasn't able to take art which I was good at, or cookery. I have never regretted doing languages at school and studied Italian and Russian for fun as an adult.

As an afterthought I have noticed that grans who went to grammar school always mention it in posts about school and am surprised at the sheer number who did.

I passed, probably in 1960, but have no idea by how much. I don’t think we were told.

I still feel for the poor girl in my form who turned over 2 pages of the test booklet by mistake, and only realised when it was too late. She ended up at the very worst school in the area.

Because of her mistake, I was always very vocal to exam-taking dds about not doing the same, plus checking everything carefully - plus of course the old chestnut about ‘Answer the question! The one they’re asking, not the one you wish they’d asked!

OP we took the 11 plus the same year,

Was borderline but went to a secondary school for girls in the ‘top’ stream, Because of family difficulties I left just after my 15 th birthday taking no formal exams .

We had no career advice but we all knew our place was to be employed in an office, shop Or factory. I got a clerical job in the civil service. We were not encouraged yet many of us proved to be successful despite the relatively poor start,

Decades later further /higher education opportunities allowed older people, who had missed out first time, to study. The first formal Exam I ever took was my Hons degree. Followed a couple of years later by a couple of GCSE’s just because I could. I am forever grateful for the chance.

There are only about 160 grammar schools left in the country, concentrated in just a handful of counties so most children go to non selective schools and can do very well. I am sure the standard of education is far far better now than the very basic education I received in a secondary modern so long ago.

My children went to grammar school and my GC has just started this year. As ever there are positives and negative in both systems, but children can succeed in either if they have sufficient motivation, support and teachers who encourage their pupils to do as well as they can,

I passed the first part but failed the second so went to secondary school in A stream. My brother however just scraped through and got into Grammar School, worst thing that could’ve happened to him I can still see him now struggling with a huge satchel of books and him being not at all academic and when it came to the end of school he was told by his teacher you better be a chef Jimmy because you’re not fit for much else. My brother died of cancer aged 49. I’m sure that awful period of his life stayed with him…(this was early 60s)

When I took my 11+ (it was called 'The Scholarship' back then), in 1952, my family were living in a house on a new Council Estate in Essex. This had been designed and built to take on the overspill manly from East London. Myself and one other girl on that estate passed with a higher mark to get our (my parents) first choice of school. My Mum had researched and discovered that not too away was an excellent Girls School, only recently changed from being totally fee-paying school, and had put that at the top of the list.

The Headmistress there was horrified when she discovered that two Estate 'Gals', was down to come to her school and called in our parents, advising them NOT to accept the place.

My Dad, who until then had taken little part in anything to do with my education (that was my Mums role), was furious so I went.

Although we had been told that I had come 6th in the 11+ in the large County I was put into the B stream at that school, First time in my life I had ever not been in A stream!

I did get on pretty well with most of the girls there, but many of the teachers made it quite clear I should not be there, did not like my East London accent. Think I gave at least one of them a fit when, during a lesson on 'Politics', I happily volunteered the information that my brother was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and the leader of that party was a visitor to our home!!!

When we moved back to London, at the end of my second year there, I left that school. Not sure how well I would have done had I stayed - gave me a life-long distaste for middle class snobbishness.

I passed mine in 1976 ....I went to one of 2 all girls grammar schools in my city

I have always felt a failure and below par because I failed my 11+ but was on the borderline of passing. I was offered the chance to go to Grammar School at 13 but my parents wouldn’t hear of it as I’d got all the uniform for the Sec Mod by then obviously.

We had no preparation at all for the exam (I didn’t even know where it was taking place and turned up to my closed junior school on the morning) and then somehow found this school I’d never even seen before. I was obviously a bit late, totally in a state, was greeted by questions which I’d never come across before so actually I think I did quite well getting on the borderline.

I did ok at senior school, in the top class and I may have struggled along in the bottom set at Grammar. I feel the people you meet at school etc can set you up for life so I may have missed out there. There was no expectation whatsoever of me or any other person in my circle of going to university. If I thought about it at all, I assumed only rich, very clever people went to Oxford or Cambridge, I’d never heard of any others. I know of schools now who teach the expected questions and tutor pupils in how to pass the exam. How wonderful it would have been to have been in that position!

And yet, I did alright in my college year, got good jobs, worked with lovely people and excelled myself as far as I could. When I worked at a university in my last job, I felt very inferior to my colleagues whereas, given the chance, I could have got a degree myself. I know I could do an Open University degree or go now on a course but I was always busy earning a living and looking after my family. I don’t honestly think I could have had much of a better life though, I’ve had a good one.

Bossyrossy, fail? Of course not! The pass mark was much higher for girls than for boys - otherwise the grammar schools would have been overwhelmingly female. There was a 13+ too, so more boys could be let in.

I scraped by in my 11 plus exam, to qualify to go to the local grammar school in 1971. We'd just moved to a new house, and because money was tight, and because I'd only just managed to pass the 11 plus, my parents decided to send me to the school nearby. It was a bilateral school, so had grammar stream classes. I did alright there.

I passed my 11+ then went to the local girls' grammar school.

Learning by rote and swotting for exams suited me.

Throughout the seven years I was there (sixth form was an assumption, not a separate college) I was routinely a good average, apart from maths, where I was in the D Stream and unashamed: I was very good at mental arithmetic but couldn't see the point of the other bits apart from algebra, which was a bit like a foreign language, a thing I Was good at. I still don't know what calculus was for but I suppose I could Google it.

Looking back on my subsequent achievements, from academic (B.A., PGCE, Cert. Theol.) to career (linguist, teacher, priest) "good average" about sums it up, really.
"Could Try Harder" in personal relationships, though.....

I did the Moray House test overseas in Malaya, and then went to grammar schools

I was expected to pass and didn’t.

I went on to a school in a rough area,where I was in the top stream.

I went on to be an Army Officer.I actually did much better than my best friend who went to the single sex Grammar School.

I can honsstly say that failing the 11 plus drove me to achieve, because I wanted to find out "how good" I was.

I was expected to pass the 11+ but failed it due to a traumatic event when I was 10 which caused a mini breakdown. I wont go into that.

One of the teachers who taught me in junior school was shocked when she saw me in the secondary modern I went to.

On the whole I did well out of going to a secondary modern school as I found myself one of the brightest kids in the school. At a grammar school I would not have ranked so high.

We had an inspirational headmaster who was well ahead of his time. He believed that all children should be encouraged to reach their potential. However he was struggling against my parents working class prejudices and suspicion of the middle class. The school awarded me a bursary to go to France but my father vetoed it.

I never forgave him and often reminded him of it in later life.

Ambition drove me to qualify in a profession (Librarianship) although later I found myself being disadvantaged by not having a degree. I went to a RG uni in my 40s and got a 1st, followed by a masters and Ph.d. Needless to say I went into academia and never returned to Librarianship.

Granmarderby10

NfkDumpling but were you happy in school, up until that point ?

In the school with 46 in the class I was as miserable as hell. Didn't learn a thing and was terrified in the playground so apparently just stood by the door. Going to that village school with two years in each of the three classes was bliss. But I had lost over a years schooling. My parents had scrimped and saved like mad to get out of the city and away. I owe them a lot.

Some untrained teachers were very good. My MiL was an untrained teacher of a reception class. The local teachers training college always wanted to place students with her when they did classroom practice because she was such a good and effective teacher.

Remembering my school days, a degree in the relevant subject and a post-graduate teaching qualification was no guarantee of competent teaching, I can remember some truly dreadful teachers, who had every qualification possible but still couldn't teach.

NfkDumpling but were you happy in school, up until that point ?

Smurf52

I too failed my 11+. I remember one of the questions was "what is the plural of box" I put lid. Noone had ever taught me what the word plural was.

There was a lot lacking in education standards when we were young. It was very hit and miss as to what quality of teaching children had, not to mention class sizes - my first primary school class had 46 children - and no teaching assistants. A knock on effect from WW2 perhaps.

And was it necessary to actually have teaching qualifications? DH went to a Dame school and I doubt the ladies who ran that did. Nor my lovely, elderly head teacher at the little village primary I eventually went to. I learnt a lot from her - but not necessarily the right things (Obviously, as I failed!)

I too failed my 11+. I remember one of the questions was "what is the plural of box" I put lid. Noone had ever taught me what the word plural was.

re IQ and Cyril Burt.
Having administered hundreds of IQ tests in my job I soon realised it's nothing more than a statistical artifact. There are various methods of calculating, Burt's was only one.
There's no test that can quantify a person's potential.

I failed my 11+. I was so disappointed, as all my friends passed and went to the Grammar school.
At the Sec Mod I had to make a whole set of new friends. My old junior school friends thought themselves above me, and none of them ever spoke to me again.
Little did I know, but my mother had been to see the junior school headmaster, and was told that the Grammar school that year had more pupils pass than there were places, and any other year would have seen me pass.
I am perhaps glad I didn't pass, as it made me want to work harder to prove myself. I passed my RMN finals, and never looked back

Anneeba

The 11 plus was based on work published by the UCL psychologist Cyril Burt. He had very right wing ideas about intelligence and fiddled his research results to back his theory that IQ is fixed by age 11 and will never change. He believed the wealthy classes endowed their offspring with an innate intelligence that needed to be safeguarded and kept apart from the lower classes. His work was not debunked until after his death, by which time a lot of damage had been done to some who 'failed' this totally flawed method of assessment. Shame on him.

Wow - never knew that.

Britain truly has had, and still has, many shameful people in its elite, and entitled class.

Well the idea that a persons IQ is “fixed” at the age of eleven may have been debunked BUT that idea certainly fixed quite a few children’s futures.