For those that nostalgically pine for the return of the grammar school this might make you think a little. I have a copy of the Flintshire Education Committee's annual report into the 11+ examination results for 1954 and it makes for a good read. It has the name of every child that passed the exam and were on their way to those 'broad sunlit uplands' of a grammar school education. The rest were consigned to the secondary moderns. The tests given to the pupils was included in the report, but these have been mention in a previous blog. However, what caught my eye this evening on re-reading the report was the numbers taking the examination and the numbers actually passing. As can be seen from the image above (taken directly from the report) in Flintshire as a whole 2,030 eleven years olds set their young brains to solve an eclectic range of questions. Only 543 were successful, which is a little under 27% of the total number of candidates. To the modern mind it seems remarkable that children at the age of 11 were selected and channelled into different life pathways. I would probably not passed the 11+ yet have benefited immeasurably from higher education; I went to what one Labour minister described as a 'bog-standard comp'.
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