Did you fail your 11+ exam?

Nope, I passed. Was told I passed highest in the local schools. I certainly wasn't the brightest in my class at grammar school and usually came in the bottom half in exams. Four girls and one boy passed from my school so I'm not sure that the pass mark was lower for boys at that time.

this is always the problem with grammar schools.
i know people who failed it long long ago; the stigma has never left them. it really marked them down in their own eyes.
my brother went to a rare bi-lateral school; you didn't have to pass exams to get in there, but you could take public exams if having the potential.
was a kind of precursor to the comprehensive ideal i guess.
the art master designed the school badge, and there was a pipe organ being built, which the woodwork classes added to each year.
wish i'd gone there, a proper school, purpose built, with trained teachers. i went to a very strange private school.

there were fewer places available for girls in grammar schools, so it was unfair.
locally there may have been some variation on this, but nationally there were more boys' grammar schools than girls'.

There is a higher pass mark when there are fewer places at the grammar school too. It varies from year to year. I agree it is such an unfair test.

Bossyrossy I failed in 1959 too and was so disappointed. From feeling like I was rubbish and useless, in 1975 I showed what I was capable of and did some O and A levels (adult education classes) then went onto to do a B.Ed.Hons 2.1. At the age of 36 I became a primary school teacher.

I took my 11+ in 1956 and I did pass I ll never forget hearing my form teacher say to my Mum “I m surprised to tell you your daughter xxxx has passed her 11+ I didn’t expect she would”
I really did feel put down by that sentence although I liked that teacher a lot Absolutely no faith in me although I think I d always been a reasonable student definitely not a high flier but average in the A group
I remember it took the shine off it and I felt very disappointed

No I passed and went to an all girls grammar school.

I failed, my parents were horrified, especially as my cousin who the considered to be as bit dim passed!
I think my dad took it very badly, I think he lost interest in me after that.

so sorry, Bluebelle.
what prats these people are.
i remember the science teacher in first form of secondary, casually mentioning that i'd always been lazy.
i hadn't been. gradually i became so; not consciously, but i think i assumed as she was so learned, esp in science, that she must know, like a diagnosis.
so i came to conform to her statement, it acted like a spell.
i wasn't clever enough, nor rebellious/confident/self aware to be angry and show her ! there was also a class element. big.
she really didn't like me. i slid down the rankings, from being first in most subjects in first year exams, to scraping a few O-levels.

I did pass, a big surprise to all!

No didn’t pass so ended up at the local comp. didn’t do too well on exams but have gone on to a senior level in financial services.

My cousin and I are the same age, same County but different schools. She had books of ex-11 plus questions and answers to practice and was quite confident she’d pass - my Aunt has even worked out the cost of the expensive uniform.
Sadly she failed - but I passed - I think only 5 girls from my school did and we went on to Durham Girls Grammar School in 1962.

I passed, and went to a mixed grammar school.

22 years later, my own daughter didn’t pass. I was disappointed, particularly as a few boys, who had not seemed as bright, did pass.

The very wise headmaster at the primary school pointed out that boys were often late developers, compared to the girls, and how they seemed at 11 didn’t necessarily equate to their ability at 14/15. So if boys didn’t have to attain the same pass mark, perhaps that is why.

My own GS and GD now attend the same grammar school as I, and their father, attended. It’s a good school and attracts children from a wide area. A certain pass mark has to be attained, if over-subscribed, then those living closest to school get a place.

I was always in the top 3 in my class so I expected to pass the 11+ and I did; because I got a very high mark I was asked to sit an additional exam for a Direct Grant Grammar School, which I also passed (though I suspect I merely scraped through), but even with the Grant we couldn’t afford it so I went to the local Grammar School.

I was like a fish out of water at Grammar School. I had to leave home in my early teens and my schooling was disrupted, so it took me quite some time to achieve my early academic promise.

I did not pass we were all told we had to get a job and get the money in. No encouragement what so ever I always wanted further education but I made up for it later on.

No.
Apparently the theory was that nobody failed the 11+ exam.
It was supposedly steering the children in the best direction for their future or some waffle like that.
I notice that Whiskas now has 11+ cat food. It makes me smile when I see a box of it.
www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/302872444
Years later I was told, but I have no provenance for it so I cannot be sure it is right, that there was notionally some absolute pass mark, but that did not really matter in practice, because what mattered was how many grammar school places there were in the catchment area for boys and how many grammar school places in the catchment area there were for girls.
Overall places available were 25% in some areas but I was once told that in some parts of South Wales it was only 10%.
So basically it was not really an examination with a pass mark but a competition for the places that were available.
I remember that Middlesex abolished the 11+ early on. Ironically Middlesex itself got abolished later. I am not sure where it was. I only knew of it because of the trick question of for what do the initials MCC stand, and because of a newspaper cartoon when Middlesex abolished the 11+ and the cartoon had a removal van and the driver said "Where to?" and a little boy answered "Anywhere in Middlesex".
I once saw a children's quiz show on television where the questionmaster asked a boy for what the initials MCC stand and he answered "Middlesex County Council", and the questionmaster looked into the distance, presumably at an off-screen adjudicator, paused, then said "Correct.". It was very much a widely-used trick question back in the 1950s because in cricket MCC means Marylebone Cricket Club, not Middlesex Cricket Club as many people thought.
Oh cricket! It overran and children's television got cancelled that day and the tv announcer said "but I hope you all enjoyed the cricket".
However the BBC seemed to get its priorities right years later when the TUC conference and Political Party conferences were on BBC2 and they were told that conference would not be broadcast for around 20 minutes each morning so that Playschool could be broadcast. Very sensibly the conferences synchronised their mid-morning break each day with Playschool!

but what about the unfairness of it all, how it is so weighted in favour of the middle classes.
that's the problem, not the schools themselves, but the system.

I passed. In Wales at the time, 1954, you could try when you were 10 and again if you didn’t pass. At least that is what my mother told me. I passed when I was ten and have always suffered from being the youngest in any class. But I did love grammar school.

I passed the 11+ in 1954, 3 girls and 2 boys from our school passed. I went to a mixed grammar, but at nearly 13 moved across the country and changed to an all girl grammar. I never shone very brightly, was always in the bottom few, but managed 2 O level GCE passes (pre-dating GCSE), English Language and French, a surprise, I expected English Lit and Biology!

welbeck

there were fewer places available for girls in grammar schools, so it was unfair.
locally there may have been some variation on this, but nationally there were more boys' grammar schools than girls'.

That was not true where I went. The school was coeducational and there was almost an equal number of boys and girls. So basically it was two competitions, and some of one gender who did not get a grammar school place may have done far better in the examination than some of the other gender who did get a grammar school place.
I am glad it all got abolished in this area. It was so unfair to send people to different schools on the basis of performance on one morning when 10 or 11, because the examination was about mid-way through the academic year so around half the cohort were still 10 on the day that the examination was taken.

No, I got a good pass as I had first choice in my school of which of the three (all girls) local grammar schools I attended.

yes, many children were aged 10.
eleven plus refers to the school one will go to, aged 11 and over.
not that the exam was taken at age over 11.

Germanshepherdsmum

No, I got a good pass as I had first choice in my school of which of the three (all girls) local grammar schools I attended.

That is interesting. A choice of grammar school. In this area there was only one, so the notion of choice was never part of it all.

I failed. My parents didn't show disappointment. I went all through my all girls secondary school in the top form and I don't think it held me back. A girl from my class became a deputy head and one owned her own business. Probably more successes that I'm unaware of.
Failing your 11+ isn't the end of the world.

By the time I went to secondary school in 1970 Scotland had got rid of the eleven+ so it was mixed ability comprehensive for most. We were tested in first year and the 'brightest' were allowed to take Latin. I took Latin but had to drop art which I really enjoyed. I never considered myself clever and had to work hard. However I was blessed with a good memory and that really helped me with vocabulary learning. I was also a prolific reader from a very young age which helped too.