Grammar schools - 1960s/1970s

Iam64

Abnuyc123

I failed the 11+ and attended an awful secondary modern school. I grew up believing I wasn’t very bright.

Subsequently I was lucky enough to go back into education. I did GCSEs and A levels, achieving As in every subject. I have a diploma in nursing, a degree in public health and a post-grad in teaching.

I’ve also learned how flawed the 11+ system was. The exam itself was based on the work of Cyril Burt who later was discredited for lying about his studies. The system was biased against girls. It also very much depended where you lived, in terms of grammar school availability. You may have passed the 11+ but limited places resulted in a fail.

Your experience is similar to mine. It was such a divisive, flawed system.

Same here I left school at sixteen with no sense of a career being possible and spent years working for low pay in unrewarding jobs. I took my GCSEs in my twenties; gained an OU degree in my thirties and a professional qualification.
(2.1 degree) in my forties. After further post graduate work, I became qualified as a psychological therapist.
Failing the 11+ has had a lifelong impact on my financial standing and my sense of self and my mental wellbeing. I discovered the different pass rates for boys and girls when I was studying with the O.U and was outraged.

I attended an all-girls' grammar school in the 1960s. I passed the 11+ but a few girls entered later, at 13, from the local secondary modern. Our uniform was too elaborate and too dear. On the other hand, even my granddaughter's partially-selective comprehensive has a very expensive uniform list - to keep the plebs out?

I should say they both passed the exam but because there was a set number of places he was offered first.

My Father in law passed but didn't want to go so give his place to a girl, he went into to become a miner, which is what he wanted to be , she became a teacher. My friend always says how the whole family chipped in to be able to send her to grammar school, as her parents couldn't afford all the uniform, sports wear & leather satchel maths & cooking equipment. So much specialist from the most expensive shop in the town.

Not the point, I know, but I heard not long ago that the local boys’ grammar school was using traditional maths and English papers, instead of verbal reasoning, for the 11 plus.

Apparently although many of the new intakes had performed extremely well in the VR tests, they were unable to write a coherent sentence. The school was having to provide remedial English lessons.

All the grammar schools in my area were single sex.
They took a fixed number of students so I don't think anyone asked about the actual mark.

There were 2 Grammar schools where I lived and somehow I managed to get a place at the nearest to me ie about 3/4 hour on a school bus. It was a mixed school and we had quite a lot of opportunities to do different things in the upper part of the school. How I managed to play the piano in assembly I don't know as usually I was a bundle of nerves but I enjoyed singing in concerts at the school - The Mikado, HMS Pinafore and the like. I was made a prefect in the 6th form along with others and also learned a lot about handling people which was really useful when I left home.

Sorry about my mispost above . I was doing it on my tablet and between my dyspraxia and dodgy fingers, I find it almost impossible to type on it or get it to send or not send.

Anyway, away from the apologies, as I said I am another army brat, eight primary schools and two secondary schools. I took my eleven plus in an army school in Singapore.

In my final year in primary school I did one term at a school in Hong Kong, had no schooling the Easter term because of chicken pox and moving from Hong Kong to Singapore, and a new school in the summer term.

Sometime in the summer term a teacher from another class came into my class and asked 'Has anyone not yet done their 'Moray House. I put my hand up and asked 'What is the Moray House'? 'Right' said the teacher 'Come with me', so I went.

About six of us were taken into another classroom and given some test papers to do, maths, English and verbal reasoning. I quite enjoyed them.

About a month later my parents got a letter to say I would be going to the grammar school in the following school year.

Moray House was an eductional institute in Edinburgh, who set 11 plus type exam papers for use in British schools overseas. If you passed it, when you got back to the UK, whicheever educational authority you moved to had to recognise that you had passed the 11 plus and offer you a place at grammar school.

Actually, I think it was the best way to do this exam, no knowledge in advance, no preparation, no worry or fear of understanding of its significance, just sit in a classroom and do some tests.

Cyril Burt insisted intelligence was inherited, was fixed and was unchangeable. An IQ test taken early in life would reveal which children were bright and which were less intelligent. There was no point in trying to raise the performance of 10 or 11 year olds who did badly in IQ tests because their score would stay much the same throughout their lives.

Burt’s influence was enormous. He was called the father of educational psychology and he certainly fathered the 11-plus. He developed and publicised the IQ tests on which it was based and he was a consultant to the Committees that designed the examination.

Shortly after Burt died, his studies of inheritance of intelligence were discredited after evidence emerged indicating he had falsified research data, inventing correlations in separated twins which did not exist, alongside other fabrications. He claimed to have research assistants but this also proved false.

It’s absolutely shocking that our entire educational system was based on the made up findings from this man, yet the fact appears to be unknown to most people. I think there must have been some sort of cover up. It’s deeply concerning and has affected many lives.

Oh yes onlymedea that was what I meant when I first replied to Cariadagain. A boy wasn’t given her place because the number of boy/girl places were already decided.

It is true though that the girls who got places scored higher than the boys who got places.

I was a bit slow on the uptake of what growstuff was saying😳

I am sure I saw research on this years ago that suggested, at least in London there were more places for boys than girls. This was due to more single sex schools for boys. I went to a mixed grammar and every class was equally balanced with 15 girls and 15 boys. I went in the last year you could leave school at 15 and a few in my year did. A lot more left at 16 and not all those who stayed for A levels went to Uni. I think the unfairness of the system felt by some of those who failed 11 plus was understandable to a certain extent, but it was only the dedicated who benefitted greatly. There were also a good many who went to Comprehensives who did achieve a lot and went on to Uni, it's about more than an intelligence score in the long run.

Georgesgran

Durham City had both boys and girls Grammar Schools, so in 1962, I’d have no idea of any bias. I still have friends from my Grammar School days.
Sister-in-law started at the local Secondary Modern School when she moved. She didn’t like it and somehow managed to be transferred to their local Grammar School, despite failing the 11+.

I’ve often wondered about that.

In my area people were occasionally transferred from secondary moderns, if it appeared later that the 11 plus had somehow got it wrong.

A girl at my junior school ended up at the secondary modern that was everybody’s last choice - she’d managed to turn over 2 pages of the 11 plus booklet together, and didn’t realise until just before the end.
Which is why I repeated this horror story to dds before every exam! Make sure you’ve answered all the questions!!

Whether the girl was ever transferred I don’t know - there was another girls’ grammar apart from mine,

In my area there was one boys grammar and one girls grammar so no problem. All the grammar schools we ever had contact with for matches or other events were single sex, we were kept well away from the boys!!
The education system should raise everyone up not dumb down to the lowest.

My Grammar School was girls only with the boys having their Grammar School nearby.

The best thing I ever did was to fail the 11plus. Because the High school had good technical facilities for science, metal work, woodwork, together with maths, discipline was good. I enjoyed my school days we had good teachers, certainly a better education than most get today.

My South London primary school was huge and we were told only a very small passes were expected at 11+. I have an August birthday so was only 10 in the Autumn of 1958 and had just arrived from New Zealand.
My older sister had begun at the very new, Comprehensive school but hated it so our widowed mother paid for her to go to the GPDST girls' school several miles away which was Direct Grant and like a grammar school.

The pressure on me was very strong to pass so I could follow my sister but for free. The exam was very hard for me especially the English paper which was full of quotations I didn't recognise.
Months went by and I was so worried that my mum went to see the headmistress to find out .
Mum was told that even if I hadn't passed I did she had the authority to offer a Governor's place to deserving children.

Could that be true? Anyway however I got in, I was excited to go as a scholarship girl to my sister's school, I got a bike which I rode to school sometimes.
Sadly I wasn't very happy there .

Abnuyc123

I failed the 11+ and attended an awful secondary modern school. I grew up believing I wasn’t very bright.

Subsequently I was lucky enough to go back into education. I did GCSEs and A levels, achieving As in every subject. I have a diploma in nursing, a degree in public health and a post-grad in teaching.

I’ve also learned how flawed the 11+ system was. The exam itself was based on the work of Cyril Burt who later was discredited for lying about his studies. The system was biased against girls. It also very much depended where you lived, in terms of grammar school availability. You may have passed the 11+ but limited places resulted in a fail.

Your experience is similar to mine. It was such a divisive, flawed system.

I ‘failed’ the 11- plus, much to my teacher’s surprise! There was a consistent pattern in the number of boys and girls who passed every year. One year it was 7 boys and 3 girls, the next year 7 girls and 3 boys. Unfortunately I was in the first group. The 3 girls who passed in my year were summer babies who were given the extra marks. There were separate schools for boys and girls, 3 miles apart. The boys school was a lot larger than the girls school.
On reflection I do wonder if a certain number of places were allocated to the individual primary schools every year. That may have been a decision made by the education authority.

However in the first year of the secondary modern school I came top in the exams, was interviewed by the headmistress and governors of the grammar school and was transferred into the second year of the grammar school. I struggled to catch up as algebra, geometry, chemistry, physics and languages were not taught in the secondary modern school.

Having said all that, many of my friends in the secondary modern school did as well in their careers as my friends in the grammar school. It just took them a bit longer to get their qualifications through further education and night school.

Georgesgran

Durham City had both boys and girls Grammar Schools, so in 1962, I’d have no idea of any bias. I still have friends from my Grammar School days.
Sister-in-law started at the local Secondary Modern School when she moved. She didn’t like it and somehow managed to be transferred to their local Grammar School, despite failing the 11+.

I’ve often wondered about that.

Yes I know a girl who did that. She failed the 11 plus but transferred to the grammar in the second year.
I asked how that was possible and she said the grammar school had a spare place. They took her on her school report and end of year test results at the secondary modern.

She had catch up lessons after school for Latin. I guessed parents pushed for the move because her older sister was already at the grammar school.

I missed the 11 plus by 2 years. The county I lived in was the first to go fully comprehensive.

I never heard of the discrimination against girls with regard to the lowest passes. I went to a Girls' Grammar, but there was also a Boys' Grammar, two mixed Grammars, a boys' and a girls' Catholic Grammar two bi-lateral schools and in 1957 the first Comprehensive school to open. There was a range of secondary schools, some very good and forward thinking, and just one dreadful one, which had endless resources poured into it to improve it, but an endless struggle.

I was told that boys suddenly discovered they had brains at about ten; the kindly secondary school master was spinning something of a yarn about boys developing brains in their teens; more to do with social conditioning: boys were expected to have careers, girls to have jobs before they got married.
The girls' grammars generally promoted the idea that women could do anything, and were expected to do so, definitely a career and appropriate qualifications, degrees, teacher training, medical, engineering, art, drama, secretarial qualifications of all types.
Women's Lib without all the shouting.

I scraped by in the 11-plus, but didn't go to grammar school - parents couldn't afford all the equipment etc., anyway, as we'd just moved house. Istead, I went to the bilateral school next to it, and was in a grammar stream class throughout.

Lathyrus3

growstuff

Lathyrus3

It’s not quite accurate to say that your place was given to a boy who hadn’t passed. He had passed. It was just that the pass mark for boys was lower than the pass mark for girls!

This is why there were equal numbers. The system ensured that.

Not true in my area. It was single sex, so the pass mark depended on what was needed to fill up the places. We were never given the pass mark anyway.

Nationally boys as a group scored lower than girls.

So if there were an equal number if single sex places boys could get into a grammar school with fewer points than girls.

So say you needed say there were 100 places for each. The highest hundred of girls would get in. And the highest hundred of boys would get in.

But girls got higher marks so that 100 would be getting say 95% . But the 100 boys would be maybe those who got 90%.

So there would be a group of girls who got 90-94%, who scored higher than the boys, but who would wouldnt get a grammar school place, even though they beat the boys.

And in some areas there were more places for boys anyway, so those boys maybe nay scored 75%, but still got a place though the girls at 94% didn’t.

I don’t think I’m explaining this very well😳

But that in no way means that boys were given girls places as the vast majority of grammar schools were single sex.

Single sex here too, still are, although some girls are allowed into boys 6th form. Girls consistently achieves better results but both are highly regarded, many parents do pay for extra tuition to pass 11 plus.
Primary schools in this area are very variable unless children go to one of several private primary schools, grammar schools are seen as a good and much cheaper alternative to a private secondary school.
Having parents able to instill the discipline of learning is an enormous advantage for the child

Luckygirl3

Yup - the pass mark for girls was set higher than for boys.

So given most grammars were single sex how did that work? If you got a pass mark and all the schools were full did you get a place? What if it was the opposite? Were there empty seats in September because a few girls were a mark short of the pass mark?

There wasn't a set passmark from what I know of my own area, if there were say 1,000 places in the girls grammar then the 1,000 girls with the top marks got a place (slight tinkering with marks adjusted for children born at different points in the year.) There was also which grammar you selected, as an example in my city there were two Catholic grammar schools, one for boys and one for girls. You needed a high mark to get a place in either of those schools as pretty well 100% of Catholic families put them as a first choice and then they were very successful because the children who got in had high passmarks so lots of non Catholic children also put it as first choice.

I think it was all a lot more complicated than people realise.

I was also the child of a man in the forces so I had attended several schools before taking the 11+. However, the exam was not based on knowledge but on intellect, so it made no difference. I passed and was asked if I wished to go to a boarding school but we were living in Cyprus so no contest!
When we returned to England I attended grammar schools, which were all single-sex. If the numbers were manipulated, it may have been to fill the schools, not for the sake of equality.