Re: 11 +
Maybe I just have very bad memories of the terror of the 11+ in 1967?
I grew up and was "educated" in Nottingham.
The eleven-plus was a result of the major changes which took place in English and Welsh education in the years up to 1944. In particular, the Hadow report of 1926 called for the division of primary and secondary education to take place on the cusp of adolescence at 11 or 12. The implementation of this break by the Butler Act seemed to offer an ideal opportunity to implement streaming, since all children would be changing school anyway. Thus testing at eleven emerged largely as an historical accident, without other specific reasons for testing at that age.
Criticism of the eleven-plus arose on a number of grounds, though many related more to the wider education system than to academic selection generally or the eleven-plus specifically.
The proportions of schoolchildren gaining a place at a Grammar School varied by location and gender. 35% of pupils in the South West secured grammar school places as opposed to 10% in Nottinghamshire.[7] Because of the continuance of single-sex schooling, there were fewer places for girls than boys.
Critics of the eleven-plus also claimed that there was a strong class bias in the exam. JWB Douglas, studying the question in 1957, found that children on the borderline of passing were more likely to get grammar school places if they came from middle-class families.[8] For example, questions about the role of household servants or classical composers were far easier for middle-class children to answer than for those from less wealthy or less educated backgrounds. In response, the eleven-plus was redesigned during the 1960s to be more like an IQ test. However, even after this modification, grammar schools were largely attended by middle-class children while secondary modern schools were attended by mostly working-class children.[9][10][11]
Passing – or not passing – the eleven-plus was a "defining moment in many lives", with education viewed as "the silver bullet for enhanced social mobility."[12] Richard Hoggart claimed in 1961 that "what happens in thousands of homes is that the eleven-plus examination is identified in the minds of parents, not with 'our Jimmy is a clever lad and he's going to have his talents trained', but 'our Jimmy is going to move into another class, he's going to get a white-collar job' or something like that