Eleven plus

MiniMoon

I remember sitting the 11 plus and thinking that I'd done well. I was totally crestfallen when the results came and I hadn't passed. It was awful to feel a failure at 11. My mother tried to console me by saying that it would be better to be top of the class in the sec. mod., than bottom at the grammar school. She wasn't really very helpful as all my friends had passed and I had to make a whole set of new friends.
The worst part of it was that the girl I thought was my very best friend totally ignored me whenever we met in the small town where I lived.
It wasn't until I was an adult with a good career in nursing that my mother told me she had gone to ask the headmaster about my 11+ result.
Apparently, that year there had been more children passed than there were places at the grammar school. In another year I would have passed.

Same experience for me.
We moved regularly, not army but similar background, dad moved when told to. I did 5 junior, 3 high school places. No national curriculum so I did the Vikings and little else in history.
It was a dreadful thing to banish the majority as failures and give an excellent education the the few

MOnica is right, the system also wasn’t helpful to people who weren’t suited to grammar school environment
Thank goodness for excellent comprehensives.

Iam64

Shelflife

I remember being told I would not be going to the grammer school with my friends!! That was awful. My parents were amazing no recriminations. Having ' said ' that I ended up with a first class degree from a good university.
Assessment is very subjective and to test such young children is utter madness!! How can a child be written off aged 11!? and sent to a secondary modern school to receive a sub standard education. Despite my loving parents I always felt a failure. I would hate to see a return of the 11 plus.

Same

And the reverse. At grammar school I had a friend who passed her 11 plus, but struggled all the way through because she really was not academic, but was driven by a mother determined that her daughter should make the most of all the opportunities she never had.

She did poorly in her exams, developed a bad stutter and lost all confidence in herself. A year after she left school, she went off to Australia and never came back.

Shelflife

I remember being told I would not be going to the grammer school with my friends!! That was awful. My parents were amazing no recriminations. Having ' said ' that I ended up with a first class degree from a good university.
Assessment is very subjective and to test such young children is utter madness!! How can a child be written off aged 11!? and sent to a secondary modern school to receive a sub standard education. Despite my loving parents I always felt a failure. I would hate to see a return of the 11 plus.

Same

REWIRING

I failed!!! However ended up with a 2.1 honours degree and law degree. Apparently when the teacher went round the class asking what we wanted to be when we grew up I said ‘ I want to be happy and enjoy myself’ I would say now not a bad aspiration

I think I wanted a car and a telephone as we had neither. 😁
And my ambition was to be a teacher only because I wanted people to call me Miss Smith because, of course, everyone called me by my first name when I was 10!
(Not my real name.)

We had to travel to the grammar school a few miles away by bus to take the test which was nerve wracking to start with considering I’d always walked to school. I recall thinking it was quite easy. I passed, a letter was sent to my parents. They were so proud but neither of my best friends had passed and I was feeling very different about the outcome. I started at the Grammar School, 3 miles away by bus, full uniform (including a hat 🙄). The teachers wore caps and gowns and I found it very intimidating. It soon became apparent that buying the uniform was only the start! I needed hockey kit, tennis kit, fancy ingredients for cookery classes. My parents couldn’t keep up with the cost and I felt very inferior. After 2 years I refused to go. I ended up going to the secondary modern and was with my friends again but it was never the same. All in all my schooldays were a very unpleasant experience for me. I still feel guilt for putting my parents through a very tough time but it was would destroying for me and I wish they’d understood. 😢

I was in the ‘top’ class all through primary school and took my 11+ in February 1970. Mum had already ordered my girls grammar school uniform and was in shock when she read the letter which said I’d failed, but was borderline.
I seem to remember a discussion whereby I was invited to take further tests. She declined saying she’d rather I was at the top in a secondary school than be scraping along at the bottom of the grammar school.
This did wonders for my confidence as you might imagine, however I did coast along at secondary, under very little pressure and was in the A stream class all through school which meant I took O levels, not CSE’s.
I passed my O levels and then went to
the grammar school VI form
to sit my A levels.
Mum recalled at the 1st parents evening there, that another Mum from my primary school days, looked at her on arrival and said something along the lines of ‘what are you, doing here?’.
Mums retort was classic- she said, ‘the same as you’….
I left there with my A level passes, went to uni, got my degree, became a teacher, did various qualifications including master’s, culminating in the NPQH- and retired in 2017 as a deputy head of a large primary school-deciding that I didn’t want to be a Head after all as I enjoyed being a teacher! Not bad going for someone who was technically written off at 10…

I also took it 60 years ago. We did an English paper, maths paper and 2 verbal reasoning papers. We did two morning I think they were a week apart. I remember the short English essay was to write a description of how to clean muddy shoes, then there was long essay that I can't remember and a comprehension about the history of Disney and how he started his studio. I don't remember a thing about the maths paper except my teacher saw it and asked me what on earth went wrong. Very relieved when I passed. We received letters in the post with results and I knew the results were out as some kids got their letters before school. I had to wait till I went home for lunch. My dad was holding the letter and I knew I had passed as my letter was pink and failed letters were blue.

Haven't thought about that in years

My sister was a year above me and she passed. My mum was away visiting her sick mother when the results came. I remember my dad sending her a telegram saying “ J has passed QESS” = Qualifying Examination for Secondary Schools, commonly called the “scholarship”. So naturally nobody was surprised the following year when I passed, and no great fuss was made.
I had the choice of three schools, one was co-ed, two were single sex. I think there were extra classes added because of “the bulge”, so quite a few of us passed from my junior school. This was 1956. I had already jumped a year, so I was the youngest pupil in my grammar school.
I don’t remember much about the exam, but we had practised the type of questions for three months. We had weekly tests and were re-seated in rank order each week, with the weakest at the front under the teacher’s eye. She was a brilliant teacher. I enjoyed comprehension and verbal reasoning, but nowadays I know I would really struggle with the non-verbal reasoning and the maths.
I loved my grammar school ( except PE) and went on to university, but what benefitted me most was the music- choirs and orchestra, a love which has lasted all my life.

For Shelflife -- your comment is at least ill-considered, and you've contradicted yourself anyway. Those that failed 11-plus didn't automatically get "sub-standard education" and you've stated that you got a decent Uni degree?!

Those taking it are hardly "young children" - and what would you do without SOME assessment?

YOU would presumably build gigantic schools for 20,000 kids, chuck everyone in, a complete mix of abilities, those who are dim and/or don't want to learn being disruptive and destroying the education of the brighter ones, THAT is your ideal? Oh, and mixed-ability classes are notoriously difficult for teachers to handle.

NB -- It's "grammAr" BTW.

I took the first half of the 11 plus in 1962. This was inthe North Riding of Yorkshire.You hadtopass the first half to be able to sit the second half.Luckily I passed both halves and went to a convent grammar school which I enjoyed and which gave me a great education.I was one of sixteen children who passed the exam from my primary class of fifty six. The primary school class sizes were huge then, Itwas very formal, so unlike today.

My school was a large Junior School, all 96 children in our year took the 11+ in the school hall, I think all other pupils had the day off on the day of the exam as most classrooms opened onto the hall.. We had practiced for the 11+, like most if not all Primary Schools in our town - unfortunately we all had to take the exam twice as it was found that one of the papers at least had been used as a practice paper by a number of schools. I remember being given the results at school. Names were read out in class and asked to go to another classroom and the some pupils arrived in our classroom. We were told we had passed, names were read out for the the Boys Grammar School, the Girls High School or the Technical High School which was a mixed school. I passed for the Technical High - when we were walking home my Auntie (who was in my class but had failed) and I were both crying and bumped into our dance teacher who asked what was wrong. My Auntie replied I've failed and she's passed her 11+, who's going to look after her when we change schools?....she had always very protective as I had always been very small.

We still have the 11 Plus where we live. My daughter decided against doing it. I suspect she would have passed but she’s doing fine in a much smaller school than the Grammar.

I took the 11+ in January 1955. I remember it as being a very cold snowy day, and as I passed my mother's friend's house on the way to school she wished me good luck.
Despite being second top in the class that year I failed it.
The results were posted to the school a few weeks later and the names of the pupils who had passed were read out first, and mine was not amongst them.That was all that was said. I cried on the way home as my parents had been told beforehand that I would sail through it.
My mother said nothing at first, just stared at me and walked out of the room.When my father got in from work, and heard about it he actually told me I was stupid. This was the first time in my life I felt I was a big disappointment to them.
I did very well at the secondary modern school however despite my parents never ''taking'' to the school. Neither of them ever came to the open days.
I went on to have a very successful and contented career as a nurse, which I later discovered I would not have been refused an entry, in those days, despite having not had an academic education.
I am very pleased my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren have not had to suffer this humiliation at an early age.

Indigo8 - I think the top stream took CSEs and stayed to 16 to take them. Most left at 15 without being offered to take any CSEs. In my area it was some years later before CSEs became widespread, possibly after school leaving age rose to 16.

I failed!!! However ended up with a 2.1 honours degree and law degree. Apparently when the teacher went round the class asking what we wanted to be when we grew up I said ‘ I want to be happy and enjoy myself’ I would say now not a bad aspiration

Indigo8

Elusivebutterfly Didn't secondary modern children take exams known as CSEs and a top grade pass was the equivalent of an GCE O'Level?

I thought that the modern GCSEs were an amalgamation of the two exams but I may be wrong.

Before GCE O levels I think students had to pass at least five subjects in a School Leaving Certificate and it was called Matriculation.
Perhaps some Gransnetters might remember taking that.
If you didn't pass at least five subjects, including English and Maths, you failed to matriculate.

My 11+ exam must have been one year previous to the OP . I don’t really remember much about it . It was held in our very large primary school and we were told before it to leave out any questions on decimals as we hadn’t covered that subject in our lessons.
The results were sent out by letter to my home because I remember my dad saying that I had achieved my first choice of the five grammar schools that I had put down .

I took my 11+ when I was 10 and my then best friend (who failed) said I only passed because I’d been given ‘age points’. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I remember the day, it was in January 1963, in the worst snow for many years, and even in London the snow came over my boots, which admittedly probably weren’t that high. My mum dressed me up really warmly and sent me off with a hug and a “do your best”. We took it at our school, in the hall. There were verbal and non verbal tests and an essay to write. When the result came through the post my Dad was ill in bed, for the only time in his life - I think there was a flu outbreak that year - so I ran up to him and he was so proud of me, I was the first family member to get to a grammar school. I admit I struggled, and was always in the lowest set, but I’m eternally grateful I was given the chance to go, I’m sure the name of the school opened doors for me later in life , for college entrance and for career choices. I was lucky enough to be able to join a profession whereas my former primary school friends who went to the secondary modern ended up as shop assistants, then married young, had children and then had no career to return to.

Elusivebutterfly Didn't secondary modern children take exams known as CSEs and a top grade pass was the equivalent of an GCE O'Level?

I thought that the modern GCSEs were an amalgamation of the two exams but I may be wrong.

I took the 11 plus in 1963 at my own school, which was the final Kent test. We did Kent tests each year through junior school, which counted towards the 11 plus result. They were English, Maths and IQ tests.
20% passed with the top 10% to Grammar school and the next 10% went to Technical school. The rest went to Secondary Modern where no exams were on offer and most left at 15. I think we were told the results at school - I passed.

I remember being so upset when I finished the actual paper not knowing the female of maharajah .

I can heartedly recommend this book (sadly no photos permitted as yet).

The Eleven-Plus Book by Michael Omara, with a foreword by the High Master of St.Paul's School, genuine exam questions from yesteryear.

It makes a great quiz book for after dinner party challenges, especially after a few drinks 🍸 🏀🥂🍷🥃.

I remember doing the exam, and particularly how we got the results. Hard to believe now, but our teacher just called out our names and said, "You've passed" or "You haven't passed." It was an appalling way to give out the results in front of everyone.

It wasn't called 11+ in my day, but the "scholarship". I remember being annoyed that I had to do it on a Saturday morning. That must have been the County one because after that I did a Manchester one and an entrance exam for the school. I passed these, and was always puzzled why most girls were given an envelope at the end of term, and I wasn't. Years later a prospective employer said to me "Of course, you went to a private school!" I said "No way could my parents afford a private school", but then realised that the envelope must have been a bill for the fees. I was supposed to be very intelligent, but obviously not!