Should we have grammar schools?

Catherine Carden has a moral objection to grammar schools – not least because they run contrary to Carol Dweck’s idea of a ‘growth mindset’. Yet she still wants her son to take the 11+...

The 1944 Education Act introduced the tripartite system of grammar, technical and secondary modern schools. It was the 11+ test that was the deciding factor as to which of these categories of schools a child would attend. This approach was advocated by Cyril Burt, a psychologist who believed intelligence was an inherited ability and could therefore be proven by an exam. Opponents of this approach feared class divisions and the negative effects of labelling children at such an early age. Burt’s research was discredited in the early 1960s. 

In fact, as revealed by the 1959 Crowther Report, in the years when the 11+ was taken across England and Wales a class pattern emerged; upper classes sent their children to private schools; the middle class disproportionately accessed grammar schools and the working class went to secondary moderns and technical schools. Even if they passed there was the danger that working class children would not thrive in a predominantly middle class grammar setting. In my opinion, this is broadly unchanged today.

There are pockets of England that do house some grammar schools, but Kent is one of the last areas that has the 11+ across the whole of its jurisdiction. Under the 1960s Harold Wilson government the tripartite education system was reformed into a comprehensive system in an attempt to reduce segregation and bring about greater community cohesiveness. This reform resulted in the large reduction in the number of grammar schools by the mid 1970s.

Questions therefore must be asked as to why Kent has made the decision to maintain this contested and anachronistic judgement of a child’s intelligence and academic potential at the age of 10. 

No room for growth

So what does going through the 11+ do or not do for a child?

Carol Dweck has written influentially on how mindset can play an important, if not vital, part of a person’s likely success. The ideal mindset to nurture is that of a ‘growth mindset’ whereby we focus on how to develop and learn through challenges and mistakes, seeing learning as developmental. The 11+ instils into children the opposite, that of a fixed mindset, whereby outcomes are judged and people are labelled upon academic success or failure. Those that pass the 11+ are clever and those that fail are not. The tests do not take into consideration a child’s development as they mature, nor does it take account of their sporting, artistic or musical capabilities: thus reinforcing a subject hierarchy within education from an early stage.

Those that pass the 11+ enter secondary education believing they are clever, and perhaps even superior to their counterparts who are clearly ‘not clever enough’.  These grammar children, in the majority, go on to achieve and move on to study Post-16 and into Higher Education, but what about those who fail and enter their secondary school feeling like failures, knowing they are not good enough for the school down the road? How does this affect their engagement with, enjoyment of and success at school? This has a very damaging affect on people’s perceptions of education as well as leading to feelings of embarrassment, low self-worth and shame. With these highly negative impacts, questions need to be asked as to why significant parts of the UK are still putting their children under such pressure at an age when they should be enjoying education and developing positively as a result.

I have a very personal and unsettling perspective on this.

My son wants to go to a grammar school, and despite my complete moral and ethical objection to this outdated and divisive system of selective education, I want him to go too. Ideally I wouldn’t enter the poor child (he is only 10 years old) for the 11+ and be true to my own philosophy with regards to allocation of secondary places: that children should attend their local school. So why did I enter my son for the test? I feel I have a duty to ensure that he has the best possible opportunities during his secondary education. It is not that I feel grammar schools offer the best teaching and learning, I know that not to be true. But to me, because of the socially engineered profile of the intake, grammar schools are able to provide a greater level of aspiration and opportunity. 

I sent him to an 11+ club once a week and upon our return from our annual ‘relaxing break’ he attended a four day summer club, teamed with a couple of 1:1 sessions to ensure that his maths was up to standard (his weakest area). I am not unusual in investing a lot of time and money in preparing my son for this test.

What’s more, I know all of what I am doing is wrong and it makes me feel deeply uncomfortable. He should just sit the test without any support. Surely then the test is fair and the ‘most intelligent’ (cognitively, of course) get their pass and those that are not as cognitively able do not and fail. However, the playing field is not fair: with so many parents and some primary schools putting a lot of time and effort into 11+ preparations, I felt I had no real option other than to join in the rat race and tutor my child. I fully recognise that in doing so, all I did was reinforce a system of unfairness – but what would you do?

I feel angry that my son has been placed in this situation. Not only does so much rest on the result of one test, but the system inherently encourages division and Social Darwinism. A common argument for grammar schools is that they are ‘engines of social mobility’, but my family’s response shows how false this is – in common with so many we have attempted to use all our social and financial capital to do our best for our son, thus potentially denying his place to a child from a family without such means.

I hope for my son’s sake that the effects of the 11+ are not detrimental to a motivated and charismatic boy who loves to learn but who also asked me on a regular basis: “Mum, what happens if I don’t pass The Test?”