Grammar schools - 1960s/1970s

I am anoter 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?, Th

The local girls' grammar school was for the 'top' 120 girls. The brother school was for the 'top' 120 boys. It's almost like the pass mark didn't come into it as there were places at the schools that needed filling.

In my city the grammar schools were single sex so if a boy got a girls place he'd have been in a girls school and that didn't happen

Caleo

CariadAgain

I was surprised to read recently that the selection process was biased against girls. I had just been assuming that one either passed and went to grammar school or didnt pass and didnt go to grammar school.

Then I read recently that less boys were passing than girls and so what often happened was they told the "lowest pass level" girls that they hadn't passed (even though they had) and gave their places to boys who hadn't passed instead. It was more important to them to have that 50/50 girl/boy ratio than to be fair and, if you won a pass = you got it.

I had wondered why it felt like there was a bit of a kerfuffle after I sat the 11 plus. It boiled down to I'd said to my parents "If I don't pass the 11 plus - I want to go to the Convent School. I'm not going to go to the Secondary Modern". (Yep....I had no idea that would have cost money - and that would mean my mother wouldnt have been able to put as much money as she did into savings). I also had no idea my brother would certainly not have passed the exam when it was his turn.

I did pass - but I must have been one of the ones with a lowest level pass and the school were planning on giving my entrance pass to a boy who hadnt passed!!!!!!

Apparently the reason was because more girls passed than boys and they wanted 50% boys and 50% girls there - and hence they put in that unfair little clause.

It's a wonder I managed to pass in the first place - given I was an armed forces child and I think it was 7 primary schools I had in total because of that. So I remember my mother did go down to the school to "talk to" them - in other words tell them, I guess, to give my entrance pass to me and not someone less deserving that happened to be a boy.

I was more preoccupied at the time with the way I seem to recall children who passed had been promised a present - like a pushbike. So I was expecting a pushbike too (though I hadnt been promised anything at all) - and wasnt given a present at all for my pass.

Maybe your experiences as a forces child gave you an advantage. My own two were RAF kids and their experiences meeting people from different backgrounds was good for their use of English as well as social skills.

Your chatty literary style is probably all your own .

I'm pretty darn sure I've deliberately blocked most of my childhood memories until around mid-teenage (at which point my father came out of the Armed Forces finally). I've figured out what I was doing and why.....

The one thing that probably did come from that childhood is I pick up understanding other peoples accents etc pretty quickly and probably a good bit quicker than most do. I can hear a very thick accent and be thinking "Agh! What are they saying to me?" initially - but give me a couple of hours and I've figured it out and I can understand them. I know the timespan from going off years ago on a residential trade union course with mainly men from workplaces across the country and boy were some of their accents thick/very thick! Cue for finish of the first day and down the pub we all went and a couple of pints later all round and I could understand them.....

I don't know about whether I was meeting people from different backgrounds or no as a child......courtesy of that largely missing memory until my father came out of the armed forces finally (I think about the first memory I'm clear on was writing an anti-war poem at grammar school - which probably got passed onto my father.....as it couldnt have been long after that that he came out and started retraining as a teacher). But I had different backgrounds in my own family - my father there saying he was a working class lad from a poor family in a Council house and my mothers side of the family had certainly owned their own house etc for at least two generations and were middle class. Cue for one comment I do remember was one of my fathers sisters commenting most unfavourably about my mother that "She's bringing those children up with middle class manners - hmmmph!"

My birthday is in the dog days of August so I will have benefitted from a ‘peg up’ to get into the all girls grammar I attended from 1965. However once there it was hard keeping up with bright girls who, after the summer holidays were (sometimes within a fortnight) a year older than me in class. I did ‘okay’ but was never clever enough to be in the top set streamed for classes in Latin. I was a bit envious.

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.

CariadAgain

I was surprised to read recently that the selection process was biased against girls. I had just been assuming that one either passed and went to grammar school or didnt pass and didnt go to grammar school.

Then I read recently that less boys were passing than girls and so what often happened was they told the "lowest pass level" girls that they hadn't passed (even though they had) and gave their places to boys who hadn't passed instead. It was more important to them to have that 50/50 girl/boy ratio than to be fair and, if you won a pass = you got it.

I had wondered why it felt like there was a bit of a kerfuffle after I sat the 11 plus. It boiled down to I'd said to my parents "If I don't pass the 11 plus - I want to go to the Convent School. I'm not going to go to the Secondary Modern". (Yep....I had no idea that would have cost money - and that would mean my mother wouldnt have been able to put as much money as she did into savings). I also had no idea my brother would certainly not have passed the exam when it was his turn.

I did pass - but I must have been one of the ones with a lowest level pass and the school were planning on giving my entrance pass to a boy who hadnt passed!!!!!!

Apparently the reason was because more girls passed than boys and they wanted 50% boys and 50% girls there - and hence they put in that unfair little clause.

It's a wonder I managed to pass in the first place - given I was an armed forces child and I think it was 7 primary schools I had in total because of that. So I remember my mother did go down to the school to "talk to" them - in other words tell them, I guess, to give my entrance pass to me and not someone less deserving that happened to be a boy.

I was more preoccupied at the time with the way I seem to recall children who passed had been promised a present - like a pushbike. So I was expecting a pushbike too (though I hadnt been promised anything at all) - and wasnt given a present at all for my pass.

Maybe your experiences as a forces child gave you an advantage. My own two were RAF kids and their experiences meeting people from different backgrounds was good for their use of English as well as social skills.

Your chatty literary style is probably all your own .

LOL at the "much much later" maturing.

Looking back to think what sex friends were whilst at school - and I guess I'd already got it fixed in my head of "Why bother? - as my parents will only hoick me out of this school as well....so there's no point in settling in".

So I only really started bothering to make friends much once I knew I couldnt have someone else (ie my parents) disrupt my life - ie once I was an adult and no-one could do that any longer. So I can only judge from about my early 20's onwards. I guess men had "caught up" a bit by then?

So I really only started making friends once I'd become an adult - and so can't really tell what boys were like compared to girls at school.

CariadAgain

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.

A rose by any other name - will smell as (not) sweet at all.

I did get given my pass - rather than it being handed over to a boy. I guess the "pass mark for boys was lower than the pass mark for girls" is another way of saying "Yep....sex discrimination against girls" and maybe that was the logistics of what had to happen to prevent my pass being wrongly given to a boy instead - ie pointing out that "If a boy can be deemed to have passed at x% - then why should a girl have to get more than x% to have her pass given to her?".

Maybe my mother pointed out that if a boy would have passed with my marks = then I had obviously passed too with the exact same marks.

Yup it was biased towards males..

They do mature much later- much, much later 😬

Yes it was age adjusted but only enough to rectify the advantage of extra months in age.

Most children started school in the term of their fifth birthday so autumn children had two more terms of schooling than Summer borns.

Even now, when most children start in September, Siummerborns do less well in Sats. Maturity makes a difference So the 11 plus was adjusted to take that into account.

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.

A rose by any other name - will smell as (not) sweet at all.

I did get given my pass - rather than it being handed over to a boy. I guess the "pass mark for boys was lower than the pass mark for girls" is another way of saying "Yep....sex discrimination against girls" and maybe that was the logistics of what had to happen to prevent my pass being wrongly given to a boy instead - ie pointing out that "If a boy can be deemed to have passed at x% - then why should a girl have to get more than x% to have her pass given to her?".

Maybe my mother pointed out that if a boy would have passed with my marks = then I had obviously passed too with the exact same marks.

Also, my DD was one of the oldest in her year, this went against her I believe, as we were told children with ‘summer’ birthdays were given more leeway.

When my daughter ‘failed’ her 11+, this was in the mid 80’s though, I was disappointed because certain boys in her year ‘passed’, and I knew she did better than them in the routine school work, weekly tests and suchlike.

However, her very wise headmaster told me that although she worked hard, was a diligent pupil, no trouble to teach, boys developed later than girls, and by the time they were in their early teens, these same boys would have matured educationally, and be much brighter, if that makes sense, than my hard working girl.

And this proved to be the case. These same boys who I had written off achieved much as they grew older.

I did a Further Education Psychology module, back in late 80's, we were told that all Girls where educational "loaded" in the 11plus. In my area there was an extra Grammar School for Boys. So the girls had x2 they boys x3. Always knew it was fixed.

I took my 11+ plus and the convent school entrance exam which was only for girls.

I failed both and went to a mixed school where I had an abolute blast!

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.

The grammar school system was unfair in so many ways. More places for boys than girls, and even more discrimination in areas with less places for girls

It was divisive. It banished many children to dreadful sec mods. I’m not criticising technical or secretarial courses which some but not all sec mods offered. I’m criticising the notion of segregating children at age 11 based on one exam.

My grammar school was all girls, too.

I started at a co-ed grammar school in 1967 and girls certainly outnumbered boys.

All the grammar schools in my area were single sex, so there was no question of giving more places to boys to make sure there was a 50/50 split.