I'm American so I never took a test like this, but as soon as I saw the first full page of text, I thought "oh jeez, I hope he looks at the questions before wasting time reading without any context..." 😅
It also helps to look at other similarly related questions. During the 2015 Cemistry GCSE there were about 3 questions where the answer to one was contained in the previous question. That was about 6 free marks for whoever noticed it. It wasn’t the only paper/test paper where that happened either.
Came here to say this. As you're reading you pick the answers up as you come across them. A lot quicker than reading through the thing again for each question.
It’s not really reading comp though, is it? It’s nothing more than another vocabulary test. Actual comprehension is understanding things like when a character’s action or words indicate an emotion without overtly naming it; or grasping that a character is aware/unaware of a plot situation because of something they say or do.
You've lost all the marks on every question that you circled the answer instead of underlining. They're really strict on that: testing whether you can obey instructions is one of the main points.
Because your future boss from Eton who got the job as hes a mate of the Chairman's son,he needs obedient minions like you to get it right or he may be facing a public enquiry and he was in the Caribbean at the time.
my guy it is designed for 11 year olds going into a grammar school. considering the level of knowledge you would need to successfully pass this exam, it is very hard (speaking as someone doing a Masters in writing)
@@helloitsme472 yea, it is. I have to agree - I passed the 11 plus and was surprised at how high the set score was in order to actually get even a chance to compete for a place in a school. And it isn't about talent or anything like that, but more about memorising. For example, the NVR (non-verbal reasoning) was about memorising things found in past papers and practice tests. The VR (verbal reasoning - like the opposite words) was simply about having a really large vocabulary. I had spent a good amount of times looking at a sheet, just trying to memorise words, their spelling, and definition. PS: This didn't include the hardest parts of VR, which has things like letter substitution sequences, where you get a word and a code. (e.g. IFMMP - 1 letter back [with the answer being HELLO] The actual test is much harder than you'd expect, and not only from the sheer difficulty from the questions, but the process of memorising everything. You have to learn a massive variety of questions, and most of them aren't even in the test. It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't done the 11+, but its kinda like learning all of shakespeare's plays, though not knowing which ones you will have a test on.
I passed my 11 plus in 1979 and went to Slough Grammar (later became Upton Grammar) in 1980, but I was right on the line and only just squeezed in. I didn’t actually do that well in my O levels (the precursors to GCSEs), left school and joined the army. It was only later in life that I went to college and then Uni, and funnily enough ended up becoming a computer science teacher! Life is weird.
Something I found out as a teacher is that tests like this are designed to put the student under extreme pressure, particularly with the time limit and also with that long piece of reading. They are almost designed in such a way knowing full well answering all of the questions is impossible.
0:23 - little correction to the note; ‘public school’ is not the UK term for a private school, just a specific subset of them. The rest are just called private schools.
Yes,in my experience, 'private school' & 'public school' are generally interchangeable,the most correct but lesser-used term is 'fee-paying school'. P.S. Not all English and Welsh counties have the 11+ test [my original county,Kent did and I passed it;however if my family had moved earlier to my later county of Northamptonshire before my due date,then I wouldn't have done it at all.🙄],while Scotland and N.Ireland,both had a separate educ. syllabus to England and Wales.
@@MrSinclairn ‘public school’ refers to a specific subset of private schools. Public schools are generally the ‘old boys club’ variety, whereas private school refers to any school where you pay fees to attend and isn’t run by the state. For example, I attended a private school for comp, and a private sixth form college for my As and A-levels, but neither were classed as public schools. Private schools are rectangles, but public schools are squares.
A little correction for you. Public schools and state schools are the same thing in Scotland. Schools where fees are paid are either called private or independent schools. Gordonstoun, where King Charles and his father, Prince Philip were educated is an independent school in Scotland, not a public school.
@@MrSinclairn which makes no sense because linguistically (and in every other sector), public is used as a juxtaposition to private. Public referring to an institution run by a governmental organisation for the public's benefit, whilst private refers to institutions owned by private individuals, corporations or organisations.
One thing to note about grammar schools is that they are generally concentrated into particular areas - and they are only at secondary level, not primary - so it isn't as though there are 160 grammar schools out of even 4,000 secondary schools (let alone all 160,000 state schools). If you live in Kent, Lincolnshire or Buckinghamshire then grammar schools are well and truly part of your local school system - in a small number of towns and cities in other parts of England they might be an option, but in large swathes of the country there just aren't any at all.
Basically I passed for Buckinghamshire got 151 BUT there’s catchment. Like I wasn’t in the area for 11 schools only for one but luckily I passed for the number one grammar school (not now) QUE which I got 237
When I took the 11+ (late 2000s) I don't ever remember learning how to do the majority of the questions at school. How well you did was really down to how good your parents were at teaching you/getting you to do practice tests etc. Some people's parents paid for special 11+ tutors. I was about 10 marks or so off of passing but tbh the non-grammar school I went to was great so I'm not bothered. The system just felt a bit unfair.
I took the 11 plus in the late 90s and my sister and brother did 2 and 4 years after me, my brother was close to passing and had to go into some kind of clearing to see how many parents had applied for the preferred school they wanted against 11 plus scores. He was unsuccessful but went to the local comprehensive school. He probably got a better education than me as there was little pressure about proving you're meant to be at a grammar school. At least for me it felt like that
I was told I was going to remedial school based on the mock 11+ my mum made me do ALL the practice tests she could find over 6 months. I was top 2% I chose comprehensive and boy do I regret that.
@@angela-thebooknerdess2110grammar is toxic, it's always a competition between everyone else for grades, everyone is an entitled twat and it leaves you with grade anxiety and fear of not being good enough for the rest of your life
I did the 11+ in 2009, passed by over 60 marks (Medway test) and I didn’t do any practice for it other that what we had to do in lessons at school. My parents didn’t push me to do anything. If you did well in primary school, you’d pass it easily.
I took it in 2004 and got into grammar school in Bucks. I went to a private prep school and everyone (who wasn't going to public secondary) took it extremely seriously - we had all-weekend tutoring on how to take it, lots of kids had private tutors that would work with them every evening on studying for it 😮 so much pressure to put on a 10 year old.
Yes, not exactly an even playing field but I can understand such pressure as it can make such a difference to your future prospects. I don't think there was a 12+ back in the 1970s when I took the 11+.
Really!! My brother & sister both went to grammar school, no private tutoring no cramming they took it and passed. It you need all that help maybe grammar school isn’t for you
@@Phiyedoughyes they’re skyways been, you’d go to comp or secondary and after a year yo could try again so quite a few kids then left for grammar, it’s a great idea because sone children mature more slowly
When I was young, everyone at school had to take the 11+ as you either went to grammar school for boys, or high school for girls, or a Secondary school. There were no comprehensive schools and no-one paid for private tutors. Some were lucky though, as their parents were teachers or had passed the 11+ themselves
Passed the 11+ test which was an 'Oxford and Cambridge' one, a more difficult test - in the late 1950's and out-of 38 Junior School Children in my class only four passed! Was shocked then how few! Three of us went to a brilliant but tough (the cane was used and virtually everyone "took it like a man" and never complained knowing they had done wrong!!!) all boys Grammar school one to a Private. Caught a school bus at 7 30 am to arrive at 8 00am. School ended at 4 15pm, and even had to go to school Saturday morning until 12 15pm!!! Left school at 16 just as they introduced girls.......
I went to college in 2019 and my teacher was so stressed about her son's oncoming 11+ test. Not only she was capable of teaching her son but she also had a tutor prepping him from a year before... It's not that the tuitors are higher quality than teachers at state schools, but the kids get more individual attention, and they have other activities that makes the difference. English class system is very much alive: a lot depends which school you went to and who you know, not what you know. There is also a regional bias, which got again attention during Covid: kids coming from certain schools are automatically marked down even if they buck the trend and do really well! This could be easily remedied by the examiners not given the information but them working blind.
"Can you use a calculator in the 11 Plus? Calculators are not allowed. Give your child a scrap sheet of paper and encourage them to use it for any rough working out. Your child should mark their answers on the Answer Sheet, not in the test booklet. This is good practice for the real exam which will have a separate answer sheet like this.11 Apr 2023"
In my day (many decades ago), there were no calculators and no-one got 11+ private lessons either. We did take a mock exam and I scored high enough to end up having to show another kid who missed it how to do a mock exam (surely the teacher's job?). And, yes, I got into grammar school and university later on...
I was born in a council house, passed the 11+ in the mid 50s, went to GS and in due course became an engineer, and ended up in contract management. I am now retired but the house that I own is a far cry from the one in which I was born. All thanks to the 11+ and GS.
Same with me back in the 80's. We had no prep, no tutoring and no real sense of what the significance of it was. Luckily, I passed and went on to have a good education and went on to have a good career in IT.
I don’t even remember a mock. Our whole class did an exam one day and a few weeks later we got letters and a few had an invitation to apply to a Grammar School. Best thing that ever happened to me. Own own house in a lively village ,after a lengthy career in education. All my brothers still on the estate.
There could also be an 11 month difference in age of those being tested depending in what month they were born. I was actually 10 years and 10 months at the time of the exam. Not so much difference in later life but can make a difference in comprehension and logic. ON starting GS in September I ,and others were II years and one or two months old when many of out classmates were already 12 years old.
When I did it the verbal reasoning test was deliberately too long so that not everyone finished as a way of further distinguishing between kids. But if you didn't realise you weren't supposed to finish you'd just think you'd done rlly badly which imo isn't fair to put on kid who's got 2 more tests to take that day.
The test is not just about getting the questions right, its about are you smart enough to read ahead, prioritise your workload, and sacrifice bits that you know will slow you down in order to maximise your score. Thats the difference between smart and really smart. And its the really smart kids we are trying to find. When I did the 11+ in the 1970s, it was to find the top 1% of the kids (at least thats what they told us at the time, it may have changed now). It was really a test to eliminate the bottom 99% of all kids. Its got to be devious and ruthless to do this. And including a question that is impossible to get right is a great way to introduce the idea that sometimes, things just ain't gonna be fair in this life, so get over it and move on...
@@nicolad8822I didn't go to a feeder school and it wasn't until 6 months before the exam that we even knew I stood a chance of getting through it. We were fortunate that we could afford some tutoring which helped me out, but a system that requires tutoring to access a higher standard of education is inaccessible to those with lower incomes.
@@nicolad8822 theres a grammar school in my town and I know a coupe of people in my year 6 class did the 11 plus but that was through their parents and private tutors or personal practice
🤣 That's nonsense. But if you need to think that to feel better... I'm a teacher and examiner. We NEVER make tests 'too long' to distinguish between kids. That gives us more marking. If we want to distinguish between kids we just put in harder questions.
I passed, but it was a long time ago, and there were a few more grammar schools then. Before taking it, we were told to not even attempt to do all the questions in order, but to instead make sure we did roughly the same proportion of each of the sections, moving backwards and forwards between them.
One thing I didn't appreciate, at the time, was that Local Education Authorities made the decisions on the number of grammar school places available. Where we lived only 10% could pass but there were twice as many places for boys. In some parts of England up to 20% could pass.
@@Sabraque I did O'levels in 1974. We were possibly the last generation that turned up to exams with a book of Log tables, but for some reason nobody taught us how to use a slide rule.
@@GlasPthalocyanine - I took my exams 1983 … they were a mixture of mainly O-levels plus couple of rebranded GCSE’s but they were still referred to as O-levels. We were not allowed calculators in any exams and had to use log tables. I think we were the final year that used them. My school was still transitioning from being a grammar school to becoming a comprehensive so I also had to pass the 11+ … I was the only student from my primary school that went there.
20:18 When I did the 11+ (in 1963) I remember thinking about how ridiculous such questions were: if there were fewer librarians they would be chatting less, and would get the job done much more quickly. But that's the logic of an 11-year-old. We also had questions about baths with plugs removed, and taps running, having to work out how quickly the bath would fill. As I had already experimented with tin cans with holes, and water of different depths, I knew that the deeper the water the quicker the outflow. I remember making a comment on the exam paper to say it was a silly question, explaining why, and how I would go about answering it correctly, adding the answer that they wanted. I realised several years later that in the exam I had invented calculus!
Hello! Sorry if this is a personal question, I am currently studying Sociology A-level and this is one of the topics. Did you get into the grammar school? How was your experience if you did? Were children there mostly from a middle/upper class?
There's a character in Neal Stevenson's book 'Cryptonomicon', a mathematical genius, that does something similar on his intake test when drafted to the navy. He spends that long working out a method to account for the difference in current due to width and bends for the first question (a boat traveling downriver between two cities, diagram to illustrate) that he doesn't answer any other questions and ends with a score so low he's only qualified to play a xylophone in a Navy band. He did however rewrite his notes for that question and have them published in an academic journal as he'd discovered some interesting new ideas about hydrodynamics.
@@dvrinai know this question wasnt directed at me but i thought id answer anyway. i got into a grammar school in 2018 through self practice with no tutors. it was definitely mostly upper-middle class, but there were quite a lot of people like myself aswell who weren’t and recieved free school meals etc
Yeah thats how I did it too... its a kind of "cheating" way of getting a result in the minimum time, but of course, thats exactly the sort of kid we are looking for!
In 1957 aged 10, I sat and failed the first part of the 11+ exam, and consequently I was sent to a Secondary Modern school, from which I left aged 15. After six years as a Fitter/Machinist apprentice and achieving a City and Guilds Full Mechanical Technicians Certificate, I moved up to the drawing office. After redundancy, and a year as a fencing sub contractor, I moved to Edinburgh and worked as a draughtsman for two years, before training as a Technical Education teacher. In the late 1970s as the first computers came into schools, I moved across to teaching Computing and IT. I retired in 2008 as the head of Computing & IT, and Network Manager at a large Edinburgh High School. In the autumn of 2008 I took some extra mural classes in Philosophy at Edinburgh University, and gained entry to do a Philosophy degree starting in autumn 2009. I graduated in June 2013 with a 2:1 MA Honours degree in Philosophy. In all my life the only exam I have failed was that 11+. Yet it haunted me until one day in a Hellenistic Philosophy lecture, I was able to answer questions that taught Masters students were not. At that point the impostor syndrome fell away, and I stopped apologising for myself, aged 64. The 11+ is extremely destructive, and can in no way be a predictor of what a person can achieve. I hold a vocational engineering qualification, two professional teaching qualifications, and a graduate academic qualification. All of which, my 1957 11+ result suggested was not possible.
Obviously, you have excelled but I would argue that the Guys who failed the 11+ back in our day ( 1965 for me) were not so strong, "in general", academically, and, virtually, every Guy that I knew from my Grammar School went on to achieve varying degrees of success and made good life choices. I would suggest that you are one of many "exceptions to the rule", my friend.
In 1959 (aged 11 ) me and 90 others from our small (Catholic) primary school sat the 11+. 11 "passed". Judged worthy of "good" education. For me that meant that I had to suffer through Latin and French at which I was ( and remain ) hopeless and have no experience of woodwork, metalwork and tech drawing. Despite my fairly good maths and science results I couldn't get an engineering place at university following my failure in French. Why not polytechnic study? Total failure of careers education. Several of the 80 who "failed" were definitely smarted than me and two at least never recovered from this branding..... what a dumb ,evil system... damn... getting worked up thinking on it...... too old and hopefully its over now , probably replaced by something just as grim, but perhaps not so obviously unjust. And, errrr ... impressively done you ( if its acceptable to offer accolades to ones senior and superior 🤗 )
@@jackieking1522 Hi Jackie. How very DARE you, Madam:) "One's Senior?" As I said I took my 11+ in 1965, Young Lady, as opposed to your 1959 lol Funnily enough, that last paragraph you sent does not appear here.. I got found out at Grammar School because Primary School subjects played to my strengths (Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, etc) but at Grammar,I did not like Woodwork and tech drawing NIL%, literally. The Sciences, Art, Music, German and Latin. There is not a great deal left though I DO remember 1/7th is 14.28% and how to convert F to Centigrade so 68-32=36, Divide 9=4 x 5=20 Degrees Censius.VERY useful
That message was intended for DickusCopernicus, who is older than both of us. Now I've registered you "name " as well...... do you live on Skye? Do you know Lynn Adamson? And this isn't Jackie writing.... its her husband.@@Isleofskye
This was so much fun! I did the 11+ but ultimately got an assisted place at a private school. I used to LOVE IT! One tip (don't know if it's the right thing to do but it worked for me) I always read the questions for the comprehension first and scanned the text afterwards
That's because when we went to school, one of the first thing's we were taught was, how to hold a pencil then a pen properly, we were also taught how to join letter of a word up correctly.
Many congratulations on sticking to what looks like an impossible task, especially in a culture with which you're not completely familiar. I passed the 11+ sixty years ago without breaking sweat - under this sort of time pressure I'd have collapsed in a heap ten minutes in. I guess the designers know what they're looking for, but it seems a pity to reject so many pupils who can give accurate and thoughtful answers, but not instantly - we need ponderers, and there's even such a thing as constructive dithering.
Well. I passed the 11+ 59 years ago, also without breaking sweat. It took all day, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., although that included breaks between papers, of which there were two or three. It wasn't a swift 45-minute job. Nevertheless, I do remember it was a bit of a push to answer all the questions in the time available and check your answers. Most children failed to finish. I feel this was (and is) deliberate. Grammar schools are basically all about passing exams, all of which are time-limited, so they don't cater for pupils, however bright, who are nonetheless slow.
It struck me that this very long passage is designed to screen out kids who have any cognitive problems like dyslexia & ADD, or whose nerves get the better of them. Grammar schools do NOT want them, no matter how smart they are.
@@eh1702 Absolutely. When Evan started to read the thing aloud, I thought “Oh no, he's buggered. This is what the dimwits who can't read without moving their lips do.”
@@allenwilliams1306 I’m not sure what your point is. He read it out for the viewers: some people watch on their phones. Extremely able and intelligent people can have dyslexia or ADD. Or anxiety, for that matter. This is the idiocy of the 11+. It takes no account of the outliers, people who may have more potential than most but who develop at different rates. (An extreme example would be Jason Arday. Early on, diagnosed with autism and global development. Could not speak until he was 11, learned to read & write at 18. At 37, became a professor at the University of Cambridge.) This test as we see it here does not test potential at ALL, it mostly tests whether kids know test-setters’ tricks and a rather inflated middle-class Home Counties vocabulary and register. (eg the question asking to identify which words are “superfluous” is actually a clumsy use of the word superfluous.) It relies very heavily on screening out kids who have not been exposed much to that class dialect and its Latinate (in the test often quite contrived) vocabulary. A huge proportion of the test is in fact all about vocabulary, including what initially looks like a reading comprehension test. It’s a crappy piece of writing, by the way, as writing. It would be difficult to formulate questions about that story that test the ability to actually comprehend - to read between the lines, to infer a plot development, say, or a character’s thoughts or emotions that aren’t being overtly described. It’s constructed purely to test vocabulary, but so are most of the questions in the first half of the paper.
@@eh1702 i am not disagreeing with you, apart from the “class discrimination” point. My point is that the test is designed to identify those most capable of benefiting from a grammar school environment, and this does not include late developers, or those with limited vocabulary, autism, dyslexia, or other learning difficulties. Nor does it include those who read with a finger moving from word to word, mentally “reading aloud”. Evan actually read aloud for the sake of the video, thus making it impossible to finish the test in good time.
I took the 11+ in 1975. My ( very ordinary rural) primary school did not coach us or give us practice tests. We were not told beforehand that we were sitting it, we just went in one morning and did it! By far the best way to establish who was suitable to go to the grammar school. It also ensured that we were not stressed or worried beforehand. My mother at the time felt that If one needed to give one’s child extra help or coaching to pass….maybe they would be happier not going and staying in the comprehensive system. 🤔
Exactly my experience (in 1968) - we were never told we were taking the 11+, and I didn't know I had until my parents were looking at secondary schools and were able to include the local grammars because I'd passed! Mind you, that county abolished the 11+ a couple of years later, so I think they were winding it down anyway.
@@mikeford4055 yes, our area was winding down too and the girls grammar school I attended stopped any intakes 2 years after me. When I sat my A levels in 1983 we only had Upper and Lower 6th and the 5th formers sitting their O levels. Sad really 😞.
The only fair system would be to operate the System used in some states in Germany. In Nord Rhein Westfalen they have 30% going to Grammar Schools who are easy to teach and are in classes of 40 children from the age of 10 to 18, They take the Abitur ( Alevels _ and go to University. The middle ability children go to the Realschulen /Middle Schools . The children are in classes of 25 .They tske the Mittlereife/ GCSE at16 and go on to Technical apprenticeships from age16 to20.they are only paid for their final year of their apprenticeships. The least able children go to Hauptschulen / Secondary modern schools. The children are in classes of 10 children and their teachers are paid extra They do a leaving exam at 15 or16 and go on to a 5 year craft apprenticeship. . They carry on with their basic education until they are 18, learning German, Maths, combined science , English and Humanities. learning their craft at the same time. They then do 3 years half time at College and half time at their work-place. They all leave school;/ college with the Mittlereife and a professionAl qualifcation. The drop out rate from all schppls is 2% for Germans but up to 14% for immigrants , who do nor speak German at home. The results are much better than Hessen and Berlin and other States which have Comprehensive Schools. Our Comprehensive system is failing the brightest children. as there may be as few as 14% of above average children in a typical Comprehensive school . Most former Communist States have reverted to the Tri-partite system and are doing well It is the tri-partite system that has made Germany the most prosperous country. in Europe . The least able children do much better there because their teachers are very well paid and the least able children get individual teaching. I meet our family friend and the children from the Hauptscule where he is Head Teacher , every year in Salisbury . At 17 , they can all speak Engllish really well and delight in talking to me in English to show off their skills in English. Also all German children are tested in their different types of schoo; in February and June and are given grades from 1 to 6 for attainment and effort. Those who get grades 1 to 4 , move up to the next yearlevel in September but those who get grade 5 or 6 repeat the year they have just been in.
I took the 11+ in a market town in Suffolk. One day at school we were shepherded into the biggest classroom set up as an exam room, seated, told not to speak to anybody and do the test. No practice, no coaching no nothing. We knew about the 11+ but were completely blindsided. I took the test, then forgot all about it until the results came through. Only 3 girls had passed (I don't know how many boys) including me and I had to leave my friends behind to go to grammar. I wasn't happy!
@@anakei160 I was the only girl to pass. So I can totally empathise with leaving friends behind. In hindsight it was a bit divisive and I was lonely for a time. Even when I made new friends at the grammar school it had such a large catchment area that I felt quite isolated during the school holidays. Got a cracking education though..🤔
Today I learnt that the 11+ is different in different counties. I didn't remember any of this when I sat the paper back in the late 00s, so I looked up the test for my area (Bucks). It's all multiple choice, with way bigger focus on the verbal & non-verbal reasoning (honestly my favourite parts). The pass mark to get into grammar schools was 121, you sat two tests and took the best mark. I think I got a score around 122, just enough to get into a grammar school. My parents took me to a private tutor for 2 or 3 sessions which I think played a part.
I wanted to prove to my girlfriend that I went to an objectively terribly school, so I checked the OFSTED reports on the year I finished school. The metric they used was something like the percentage of students that got three or more A to C grades in their GCSEs. The national average was about 45%. My girlfriend went to a grammar school and it was 100%! Seriously. My school came in at a measly 14%.
The only reason it was 100% at the grammar school is because they don't take anyone who won't get it so you can't tell at all if its a good school or not because those kids will likely get those grades elsewhere
@@justanotherpiccplayer3511 That's not really true. Grammar schools take kids with higher IQs and general aptitude, but they still need to do a good job of teaching over the five years to achieve good GCSE results. And you can't guarantee that the kids would achieve as highly at another school where the classes are forced to move at the pace of the slowest student in the room.
I went to a special school and got 5 (I know it's not many) REALLY high grades. Had I done mainstream or even grammar, they'd have been far lower but I'd have had more GCSEs. Personally, I think 5 A's, B's and C's are better than 10+ D's and E's.
@@SammiLeighPalmerthis is where I think my kids' school must have done well. We are a grammar area and yet both parts (boy/girl) of their school got nearly 90% pass rate in 5 GCSEs a-c (strong passes 5+). They didn’t restrict entry to exams either. The grammar was 100% but realistically unless a kid is really defiant and unwilling to study a strong pass was expected. The higher grades were more variable.
There were no calculators when I sat the 11 plus in 1958. I have no memory at all of doing "practice tests", all these types of questions were contained in our general day to day learning. I can remember that I really enjoyed the challenge of problem solving in the 11 plus. (I did pass).
My mum took the 11+ exam. She passed. She would have gone to a grammar school. She unfortunately moved to Canada at 12, and she was behind in her learning due to that.
@@nicolad8822 I'm guessing, she was behind, in the sense that what is taught is different. Depending on the date and area of Canada, she would have had to learn a new language (French), which was probably not taught at her English Primary school. Also would need to learn Canadian English. I'm guessing the basic/common knowledge of History and Geography will be different. A basic understanding of weather will be different. It would be difficult to know what you don't know, now, but used to understand easily.
Canadian educational standards are different to those of the UK - it doesn't mean that she was behind in her learning - you don't "lose" intelligence... Canada just emphasizes other things than the UK does. I did all of my schooling in the UK, including a science-based PhD - I now work in post-secondary ed in Canada... The expectations are slightly different but not any less. Part of the problem is that kids go to school far earlier in the UK than they do in Canada - Canadians are about a year behind. My youngest child when we moved went back to half-day kindergarten when she had been in school full time. And it is pretty much agreed that A levels are the equivalent to the first year of a University degree in Canada What frustrates me more is the self-entitlement of Canadian students when compared to those in the UK! They all want and expect to be "Spoon-fed" the info rather than finding it out for themselves! But that might be part of the internet generation as well... Your mum would also have had to learn Canadian history, geography etc which was not taught in the UK... And depending on the province, she may also have had to learn to speak French fluently - while French is taught in the UK, it is not taught at the same level that it is in some of the bilingual provinces. French is also not taught in junior schools in the UK....
Took this 55 years ago and passed, best thing I ever did, it allowed me to do O and A Levels and go to University when only 5% of the population did, it changed my life for the better. Unfortunately many of my school friends did not pass and it changed their lives for the worst. Now we have a system totally dominated by tests and middle class parents who are vociferous, I don't know which is better, we certainly had deeply committed teachers,who put in many many unpaid hours, but then they were teaching children who could sit still and listen for short periods and knew how to behave, and this was in a multicultural inner city working class school.
reading up about the old school system always infuriates me, the fact so many people couldn't do exams and go to higher education based on a test at 11 years old is crazy
Changed their lives for the worst? No it did not necessarily. Plenty of them will have ended up with very good technical jobs and ended up in management, started their own businesses, joined the military and risen through the ranks. Meanwhile many of the Grammar School kids ended up in very dull office jobs.
@@nicolad8822 This is true, but same goes for anyone nowadays who goes to college to learn a trade or apprenticeship etc. The old system didn’t allow much of a choice for non grammar students
Took 11plus in 1952 few passed in working class area, most went on to Apprenticeship nobody unemployed everyone into work,didn’t know anyone going to University
It always annoyed me that a lot of the kids who passed the 11+ were the ones whose parents could afford to pay for tutors, so it was essentially a cheaper version of private school for the more well off parents. Of course there were some naturally bright who would get in, but having tutors made a big difference
It really didn't. No wealthy parent ever chose to send their kid to a grammar school if a private/public school was available because every wealthy parent knows private school life leads to wealthy careers! Grammar schools have always been for the kids whose parents had aspirations - not money. So no money for private tutors. I've heard this myth for nearly 40 years. I've not yet met anyone who got into a grammar school because their parents could afford a tutor but not school fees.
I was just speaking from my experience. There were quite a few grammar schools in my area and also quite a few private schools, but fees for private school were c£10k a year which is a lot more than tutors. I imagine it does vary from place to place
I'd guess the 11+ changed over time. From what I remember of the exam in the early 70s, it was a lot more Maths and logic. I don't think it was necessary to coach children but our school was divided into children who were *expected* to pass, and those who weren't. I wasn't expected to pass, didn't get any extra help, but passed anyway. So did my sister.
It was the middle classes who were most against grammar schools in the 60s. The upper classes sent their children to public schools anyway. The working class welcomed the opportunity for some of their children. The middle class resented that places that they felt should have gone to their children were going to the working class. Now though the price of housing in catchment areas somewhat restricts the better non-private schools to the middle class. My parent would have paid for me to go even if I had failed the 11+ assuming I still passed the entrance exam. My father and uncle had both been and become doctors, but their parents were working class (mill-workers). My uncle got a scholarship. I failed the entrance exam for the prep when 7, and then my parents got me a tutor and I got in at 8. Everyone in the prep passed the entrance exam. We were about about a third of those who entered the main school in my year.
Grammar schools were much more numerous until about 1974, when politicians decided to close them all down and convert to a 'comprehensive' school system for all children. I was in one which became a comprehensive, during my final two years of secondary schooling. That school had existed for over 200 years. The closure of grammar schools was a backward step in several ways, not least because the standard of teaching dropped immediately to one which was more suited to the 'average' student; a student who does not exist. The specialisation of subjects to which we had become accustomed was lost. And having worked hard to pass the 11+ exams, five years earlier, we felt let down by the negation of its purpose. Some grammar schools had the influence and wherewithal to resist the new legislation, and they continue to provide a valuable service for those relatively few students who are fortunate enough to be able to attend them.
There was no passmark. Kids were ranked and a line was drawn across based on the number of grammar school places available. It varied slightly year by year. I passed in 1976. I later found out the 'pass mark' was an IQ of 115+
I passed in 1970 and no we weren’t told how well we did just if we passed, so I went to Gillingham Grammar School but they went to secondary a year after I went there. My parents removed me and sent me to boarding school instead. Not so sure I benefited from a better education but I most definitely benefited from the contacts I made.
@@Sofasurfa .. "went to secondary"...? They actually merged with another school, moved to Rainham, and became a bi-lateral school, which is NOT the same thing at all.
@@fredbear3915 I always tend to forget that folk only think of Gillingham in Kent rather than Gillingham in Dorset. The school was founded in 1516 the first Grammar School in Dorset, has the White Hart as it’s emblem and when I attended, we wore red blazers, navy pleated skirts white socks, and black brogues (saddles, white ankle socks and red gingham dresses in the summer, boys could wear grey short pants if they chose to.) Although I remember them changing the summer dress to some weird navy blue print in the late seventies. I was only there for a year. I believe it now operates as a Voluntary Controlled School.
Your question “ what have I learned?” Since your marking was bad, due to the fact that you marked as correct answers where you did not follow the instructions. Your score was less than 60 so a complete fail. Having taught test taking the really vital point is to read and follow the instructions. You completely failed on that point. It is likely that the USA looks for correct answers and ignores or doesn’t specify ask for tests to be done in an exact way. However you are testing for an extremely selective, highly valued admission so will be marked down for incorrect format. Also eyeglasses is totally inappropriate in an English school. You wear glasses or sunglasses.
You do not PASS OR FAIL the 11+. It is or was a test to see if you were more suited to an academic career or more practical education. In my case I went to grammar school but struggled. I would have been better going to a tech college.
Reading out loud can slow your reading speed pretty significantly so its no wonder you didn't have time for the rest of the questions 😂 but some of these questions are pretty unreasonable to imagine a 6th grader doing so quickly even a smart one.
I agree, Evan should have given himself maybe an extra 3 minutes to compensate for this reading out loud. I did think about this at the time as he was reading. Yeah its unreasonable, but you gotta eliminate the vasty majority of the kids taking the test. You don't want the smart ones, you only want the very smart ones. Then, once you have identified the cream of the cream, you can send them off to a crap grammar school where they will eventually become bankers and politicians, and ruin the world. Sorry I mean RUN the world.... (oops!)😁
I reckon I would have been more likely to ace this test as a kid because it would all be fresh in my brain! I feel like I've lost the majority of stuff I knew from school, especially about maths. I'm a writer though, so hopefully I'd still do well at the English part 😆
The maths was the tricky part for me since I have dyscalculia, but I still passed my 11+ with one of the highest marks in the entire country for that year (we knew someone who knew the examination board members so he asked afterwards what my exact mark was, the paperwork just said pass vs fail). I remember it being easy though. But then exams are easy for me in general. Its just regurgitating stuff that's easy to soak up just by listening & copying everything off the board (I never figured out how to revise). Now homework and coursework and dissertations at university, now those were hard. They always had a deadline at some distant point in the "not now" and they'd be months away right up until the day before & then it was just a panicked rush. Oh and I'm not sure 6th grader is the really same thing as year 6. Year 6 is age 10-11, the last year of primary school. 6th grade in America seems to be 11-12 which is 1st year of secondary school here (years 7 to 11 being mandatory, 12 & 13 are for doing A Levels). I was 10 when I took my 11+
It’s always handy when your mentors know the people who design and control the system. The kids in classes of 35 whose own teachers had no clue about the 11+ and its VERY specific culture were at a great disadvantage to you. As usual, privileged people are spectacularly unaware of how un-priveleged others are. The 11+, as we can tell from this guy, is also very much a test of upper-middle-class Home Counties culture. People from other classes and other places need people to consciously enculturate them to it.
There are still grammar schools in Scotland. The grammar school I went to years ago didn't do 11+ exam since the grammar school is the only secondary school within 7 to 15 or so miles and the school has a dorm for students who live further away from the town. I guess the school didn't give out that test to the local kids since, you know, it's the only secondary school for miles.
There are no *state* grammar schools in Scotland or Wales any more. The only grammar schools there now are independent, fee-paying schools that retain the grammar name based on their use of selective entrance exams, but aren't comparable to English grammar schools.
Was a boat involved to escape the place that pretended to be an island even though it wasn’t. If so yeah it’s the Oooooold name from when it was selective entrance. )went there too)
I passed the 11+ in 1957. We went into school one day and the teacher said 'today you are going to do a test' or words to that effect. My memory is that it was more reasoning than the one you did, pages of those puzzles. It was all so low key that I didn't give it any more thought and eventually I was told I was accepted for grammar school, though I was not in the first round of offers.
I did mine in 1957 as well. I was in a small village school with one class and an elderly, motherly teacher, who’d spent a lot of time reading Dickens to us or helping us grow turnips in the school ‘plot’. Lambs to the slaughter to be honest. We didn’t stand a chance. I ended up in a ‘secondary modern school for boys’, a euphemism for a soft borstal. My education started at age fifteen when I finished state schooling and started night school, followed by college. It saved my bacon!
Yes! I did 3 grammar school entrance tests (not technically called 11+), each school or group of schools has their own test, I passed one, it had an element you couldn't prepare for by tutoring and I got in, great school.
You should try an English Proficency Exam. At least the Grammar and Use of English part. We, non-native, are told that even native speakers would fail this exam if they don't train for it. The reading part asks about the intention of the text and there's really tricky questions. I'd love to see an American trying!
I trained as an English language teacher and can confirm I had to study grammar almost from scratch because we were never taught it you just sort of picked it up by instinct so I couldn't name or describe most of the tenses etc., and English is a ridiculous language that anyone who studies it as a non-native deserves huge respect for mastering.
I disagree with your statement about the Use of English exam. I did it without any lessons or tutoring and found it very easy. It was along time ago but might explain why as a scientist I ended up with 4 O level equivalents in English and English lit A level
Yes, I came here to see if anyone had said this - in the UK, "how far?" would definitely mean distance, never time. Even if I only really knew how long it took to get somewhere, if someone asked "how far ...?" I'd answer with something like "it takes an hour in the car on good roads, so I'd guess about 35 miles".
Huh? We do it all the time in the UK! I use time to describe how far away something is because more often than not I don't even know the distance. I just asked my husband how far it was into town from where we live and he replied "Oh, about 25 minutes walking".
@@helenan7368 Makes no difference as the poster claimed that in the UK "how far" would never be answered as a time. That appears to be as a general statement , no mention of specifically an exam answer .The second respondent added an example based on someone asking *them* the question "how far", thus showing that they too took the scope of the statement to be wider than the answer to an 11+ exam.
You didnt mention the 67 grammar schools in northern ireland, where roughly a third of kids go to a grammar school, so it's the region of the uk where grammar schools are more of a thing than in any other region.
Hell yeah! And in my day, we did several similar tests so you never actually knew which one was "the one" nor did you ever find out your score. Its was only either yes you passed, or no you didn't pass. (nobody ever used the word "fail"... I imagine in the same way that courts never use the word "innocent"... you are either guilty or not-guilty. Never "innocent". (Yeah I know, the Scots have another option too..."not proven", before somebody picks me up on it!)
I took 11 plus exams 59 years ago and was accepted to both my local (Isleworth) grammar school, and to the Latymer Upper school in London, Chose the former as it was only a 1 mile walk/cycle rather than 1 hour bus trek. I think I achieved about 90-95% but do not remember the paper being that hard!
Your summer holiday answer changed the meaning - you said they were going away for the summer (i.e. for the whole summer) in a fortnight's time. They wanted you to say that they were going away for two weeks during the summer. It's still a sentence that works, but it doesn't mean the same thing.
Hi Evan - no marks for uk/usa difference. My British son did the US Sats and went through the US university system, no allowance whatsoever for differences there so he took an extra credits to fix that problem. Good job for trying it. Most children who do and pass it, will not willing do it again 😂😂😂
When you do a comprehension test it helps to read the questions first as you will pick up and focus on relevant passages so when you go back to it. At least that what I was taught back in the sixties/seventies.
It was so funny seeing you struggle with an exam that I passed as a 10 year old! Unfortunately for me, the year I took the exam was the first year that you no longer went to Grammer school if you passed it. I always felt cheated by that, as Grammer schools were so much better than Comprehensives. Years later they changed the rules back again, and the son of one of my best friends went to Grammer school. He could go horse riding or play golf in his sports lessons! Mind you, it was much more strict when it came to grades. He passed all of his GCSE exams, but he was only allowed to get a couple of grades below A. Unfortunately three of his grades were a B, so he wasn't allowed to stay on and take his A levels! He had to leave all his friends and find a 6th form college somewhere else! They have very high standards, but are sometimes quite brutal.
I will say that not all grammar schools are that crazy! I went to a grammar school *fairly* recently, and we had the same entry grades for a levels as the other schools in the area. We certainly didn't have the money to do anything different for sports options. Honestly, I just they're schools that are aimed at a certain kind of person. While I think I got a very good education there, it set me up with a lot of issues down the road, such as massive academic insecurities and constant guilt if I wasn't working. There never really was a work life balance, but it was still the right environment for me. It's interesting to compare though, because I know for sure some grammar schools can be insane
There was never a thing where one went to grammar schools just because they passed an 11+. The test was only ever something where grammar schools could use the outcome to determine if they wanted to offer you a place - but if 100 kids passed the 11+ and the school only has 30 places, then they offer the top 30 kids those spots. It was never a guaranteed place. As for standards - we have the same at my current comp, and at EVERY school I've worked at for decades - whether state, private, religious, public, or academy. Why would any school allow students to stay on to study A-Levels if they haven't shown themselves to be able to handle the work? It's the same way universities work. As for playing golf and going horse-riding - yep, my current state school has that for kids too. They've also done sailing lessons, have the Duke of Edinburgh Award, have taken kids to do trips and voluntary work around the world, take them on ski trips every year, do the language exchange stays, etc etc. GRAMMAR SCHOOLS AREN'T SPECIAL.
In Northern Ireland they're called transfer tests, which replaced 11+ tests a good long time ago. The new system introduced this year is SEAG, two tests results added together.
My gosh that brings back memories (and yes I passed thank goodness) Don't forget Evan that you don't go into these exams without months of prep so that by the time you get there you know what to expect
This isn't the case in Buckinghamshire. All children are entered unless withdrawn by parents, but state schools aren't officially allowed to prep for it so children only get prior experience if their parents pay for a tutor or buy practice books. (Some schools do CATs which are a similar style though). The first my kids knew of the test format was the official practice 2 days before. Youngest qualified (not allowed to say pass!) & it's apparently very obvious that a fair number of classmates are there as a result of tutoring rather than ability. Obviously this probably means some children missed out who should have been there as scores are scaled on a curve so the to 25-30% qualify.
Me, wife, two kids - both Masters graduates - all grammar school educated. For those that can stand the pace, which is what the 11+ is about, it's the best education around. "Coaches" make a lot of money, but their impact is marginal, you've either got it or not. My wife worked in primary education for years and teachers had a good idea which was which early on. Those that manage to bluff it soon struggle once they get to the grammar. Love from Lincolnshire.
if you're able to get into a grammar school, you'll learn better. if not, you'll learn better in a public school. grammar school students are usually of a similar ability so teachers don't have to spend as much time helping children who struggle while holding back students who could move on and learn better
One of the best things I learned by my 7th grade teacher was to read the questions before the text on tests and then just fast read/scan the actual text for the things you needed for the questions. I was a slow render, so if I had to read the whole text I would have spend 50% of my time just doing that.
*MENTAL* arithmetic: *0.62 plus 1.37 is 1.99* which is nearly 2; *subtract 2 from 6.51 gives you 4.51*. However, you have to add back 0.1 (which you added to the 1.99 and subtracted *that* from the 6.51) so the answer is *4.52*. Took me like 3 seconds!
I went to a Grammar school and me and my friend who didn't pass and when to the local secondary school and we got EXACTLY the same grades at GCSE. It made no difference that I went to a grammar school!
"Summer + fortnight": In English it is "place" before "time". This is always a trick question on English exams in Dutch schools because it is "time" before "place" in Dutch, and the English order is counter-intuative to us. But enhlish native speakers aren't strongly aware of this. Doing it wrong just looks faguely odd to them, and they can't tell you why. But now you know. 😂
Time, manner, place was the rule at one of the top grammar schools in the North of England in the 1950s, and woe betide anyone who split the infinitive or placed a preposition at the end of a sentence.
this was super interesting as someone that went to a grammar school! whilst i don't remember much of the actual test i *do* remember that someome in my exam room had to be removed cos they were crying...
11+ exams are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT depending upon where they are sat. Each borough/county that uses them writes their own (this has always been the case). There is no standardised 11+ across the country. Meaning a score attained on an 11+ test in one borough/county will not necessarily be the same in another, especially as they don't all assess exactly the same skills. Kent County has the broadest of tests, with some other counties assessing only two skills. These days, 11+ (or 10+ or 12+) exams are taken voluntarily and are not sat by the entire year group of an area. Students also sit the Common Entrance Exam at age 13 - typically used by kids at Prep/Middle schools looking to get into specific private/public/grammar/selective schools for their GCSE years.
The Birmingham one is supposed to be horrendous. Especially as there are very few decent non selective schools here. The ones that accept 11+ failures consider anyone who gets to year 11 without being locked up in a YOI or dead due to gang violence as a success
@@dasy2k1 Codswhallop. I taught there for a decade and my friends still do. At no point would we ever set the bar so low. And as one school I worked in was the actual bottom of the country - but my students became doctors, pharmacists, accountants, sound engineers, radio DJs, an officer in the army, a lawyer, and on and on, I think I have enough experience to know that you're talking nonsense. The test isn't 'horrendous'. Kids are just under educated due to the high levels of poverty, immigrants (second language speakers), and a culture of parents being disinterested in their kids education.
Many decades ago, my generation sat the Seven Plus, the Nine Plus and the Eleven Plus. To this day, I can remember the sick feeling that the rush of adreneline brings to the body, in the year before these tests were put in front of us. We were living in a high stress state of mind and those of us who passed, did (in effect) have our grammar school education taken from us, thanks to MP Shirley Williams and her "education reforms". It goes without saying that Williams did not subject her own daughter to the "comp System" and her daughter was educated in a grammar school.
I think at my school we were preparing for the 11+ from the age of four. In the infants school repeating our multiplication tables was a daily ritual at the end of each day. I'm surprised that in my office some of the younger employees are unable to perform a basic calculation without use of a calculator. In primary school we used an exercise book called Daily Ten. The questions covered all the subjects we would need for the 11+. It was like a daily, mini version of the 11+. Our construction, grammar and spelling was corrected. This was in an ordinary state school and I believe most schools then would have followed the same curriculum. Actual results were not revealed but I must have done well as my Headmaster told my parents he was sure that, based on my results, he would be able to secure for me a scholarship to a public school. My parents were of the opinion that I would have felt "Out of place" at a public school. I attended instead a Grammar School for boys which had traditional and high standards. When I see the state of education in the UK today it makes me weep.
Went to a grammar school in Northern Ireland growing up and this brings back so many memories! Mainly forced practice tests all summer the term before haha
I'm teaching Y6 rn as part of my PGCE/QTS qualification and we've had some kids out doing entrance exams for secondary. No wonder they've needed to take a bit of extra time before coming back in to school. This is so stressful!!!
I failed 50 years ago. Grew up on a council estate, almost all from the estate failed, whereas almost all from the posh private houses passed. The difference was out of school coaching on how to pass the test. Thankfully we had a very good Comprehensive school to go to.
I haven't laughed so much for ages! Thank you Evan for so much amusement. Teachers are evil - I loved that. Clearly they are stars, but it made me laugh!
Hmm. It has changed a lot since I did the 11+ more than 40 years ago. The weighting now seems decidedly towards the question on English. I had 3 papers, one for each of the strands and they were all equally weighted. Is the absence of much maths (where was the algebra, the geometry, the fractions?) , to deter those for whom English is a second language? And possibly to make sure those students undergo a lot of private tuition to get up to speed with the language. Just saying....
I took mine in 1966. The exam was held in May and I was 11, my birthday being in September so those with bithdays in June-August would have been 10. I knew someone a little older than I who passed the 10+ exam, was refused permission by his primary school to take his place at the grammar school and then failed the 11+ the following year. He was subsequently successful in the next attempt, the 13+, but the education on offer was not as wide as if he had passed the 11+.
Gee you make me feel sooooo much brighter. I had to do this a 12 years old back in the 60’s. Only primary school ed, no calculators, etc. That time stressor is something else, isn’t it!!
The reason people struggle financially to send their kids to fee paying school is nothhg to do with academic results,thats a bonus. It's to get your son or daughter into a social network. So in ten,twenty or even thirty years time and they need a leg up,a boost in their career,a change of career or employer,inside info on the best deals on booking that Tuscan villa for the sumer etc they know the right people. As for knowing stuff,you will be boss over a division packed with the brighter state educated minions,until they get replaced by AI. As for that entry test,if you cant afford to just pay,you hire a tutor to groom your kid to spot the right answers.
As someone who does struggle financially to send their child to a fee paying school, I have to disagree. We don't care about the social network at all, it's about her thriving academically and getting pushed to achieve the best results possible. If our local secondary schools had been good, we'd have sent her to one of them, but unfortunately, neither of them have a good reputation.
@@AlycyaJane sorry but I don't quite believe you. Academic excellence is all very well,but it takes anyone a lot further allied with personal charm which I'm sure your kids have got luckily. Yes,I get your point about the dire local schools,my one is quite good I think,my nephew seemed to do ok there,but it's tough to ask your kid to sacrifice their life to work so hard to rise above the adversity and then his only social contacts are Wayne the drug dealer and Shane down the pub
I'm from the era when all of us had to take the 11plus exam. The result decided whether one ended up at a "secondary modern" or "grammar" school. This was before the day of "comprehensive" schools. Secondary modern schools were basically schools where a trade was taught, and most pupils left between 14 to 16 years old. I went to a grammar school.
I passed my 11+ and actually got one of the highest grades in the entire country that year. Unfortunately the only reason I was applying was the closest grammar school to me had widened their catchment area (area you have to live in to be able to go) that year. But it turned out that some more oocal parents were super upset that their kid hadn't scored high enough to get in (often way worse when an older sibling was already in attendance at the school) so with a month or two before I was due to start they last minute reversed the catchment area expansion & so I couldn't go. And as it was in a different county I was locked into options in that county due to how late into the application process everything was & we knew I'd struggle at state school so I ended up going to a private school instead. They had a scholarship exam to get money towards the fees but I missed out by one mark (beaten by my friend who had also missed out on going to the grammar school due to the catchment area change). Because there was only the one. Later got a discretionary one because I was doing well & they didn't want me to leave when my parent's divorced & my father refused to pay maintenance. But could've saved so much money going to grammar school.
I took the exam before people started using tutors , and it was just another exam we all took at the end of the year, we had a few practice exams.. and some workbooks to take home. My city had many grammar schools so even if you passed, the schools were graded, and you'd need to choice up to 3 schools. I was lucky and got into the top school and enjoyed it, but I know in recent years those who had been coached to pass the exam did not enjoy their time there.
Most kids who take it in Buckinghamshire are actually 10 because you take it very early in year 6. Tutoring makes a massive difference to whether your kids get in or not (my three all did and one got max marks). State primaries are not allowed to do any preparation apart from a couple of practice tests. You don't have to sit it - a few children are not put forward to take it because their parents don't want them to go through the pressure. A few bright kids get in with just some tutoring from their parents. It's not a fair system (even though mine went). It means most are middle class children, whose parents can afford to buy a house in the catchment area, and afford tutoring. Many children attend private primary school (prep school) and then take the exam and save their parents a fortune on private fees for secondary school. The non-grammar schools around here (attended by those who 'failed' or didn't take the test) are really good schools as well. I was the second year of comprehensive intake when I went to school in the west midlands in the 1970s, and I honestly think it's a better system with children from all walks of live and a range of academic ability mixing together.
We didn't prep our kids. The youngest qualified & goes to a grammar and it's obvious a lot of their classmates are there because they were tutored & not because they're naturally more able. The older 2 are doing just as well in their standard secondary because they're motivated (they didnt want to go to a single sex school either which are our only options). The only big difference I've noticed is the facilities & extra curricular opportunities are better at the grammar.
@@hlc1975that depends on the quality of the non selective schools in the area Some of them round here don't even offer GCSEs at Higher tier (they only offer foundation tier) In short they consider anyone who gets to the end of year 11 without being in a YOI to be a success story
I have seen inconsistency and ambiguity even in GCSE exam papers. Working with autistic teenagers means we always spot them and, as a result, many get the answer ‘wrong’. A common one is “What assumption did [name in the question] make?” The autistic student has no idea. They could tell you what assumption [name] would need to make in order to answer the question, but that’s not what was asked.
I know for the tactic for the reading comprehension is to read the questions and look for the answers, but I read really fast so I always read the whole passage. And if I had time, I'd go back and read it again for fun. 🤣
Wondered if anyone else picked up on this one in the comments! I think marking/editing Evan missed it in the commotion of the previous question (eyeglasses vs sunglasses) 😂 and as for test-taking Evan we can chalk that one up to time pressure
Yes. It did also say the three letter answers had to be words in their own right. I thought Evan had used "rep", forgetting that he needed a second p for "prepped".
I did the 11+ test and i passed, also passed the second stage exam. Hoping to get into Wilson's School, Wallington County Grammar School or Sutton Grammar. I will find out on March 1st 2025 and good luck to anybody who tries it. Even if you don't pass, it will boost your mindset and it will help you a lot in life and in studies! Always take the chance!
Ooh interesting. I went to a Grammar school so naturally I did one of these, but I have no memory of how long it took and the content of the questions. I might have been tripped up by the time as well, but I think i'm better at comprehension than maths. I will say though that I would have marked you wrong in a couple of those instances. Spirit of the question is not really applicable in these sorts of tests. The short time limit also tests your time management, whether or not you can prioritise your time effectively (which I think you did pretty well here). 84% is nothing to scoff at!
When it says 80% is the average pass mark, you got over 80, so you passed. You are likely to be accepted to Grammar School, save the exception or circling rather than underlining, etc. The most important thing to note is that the pass mark will be moved every year, depending on the number of places in the grammar school - that is to say IF they set the same test 2 years in a row (they never would!), the pass mark (i.e. accepted to grammar school) could be different.
I took the 11+ in 1953 and we had to write an essay and a paper on current affairs as well as the English.comprehension and maths.The tests ran over 3 days. I’m pleased to say I got a place at grammar school .
When I did my Kent test ( what we called it in well Kent) I got a 125 and was 5 away from getting in. I was happy with that score because I was close enough that I felt smart but it made my decision for me because I was on the fence for a grammar and regular actually happy I failed love my school
1973 - the teacher just handed the papers out without ever saying what they were for or why in our normal classroom - seemed lke a normal test but with a printed paper. It was only years later I realised what it was. Passed, but hated grammar school. Life was just school/homework/sleep/school/homework/sleep etc and homework all day on Sunday. Evil dump where the only regret was being away when the school was demolished and never witnessed it being pulled down.
Yes I took it back in 1970 and the one thing I do remember being told is to time manage and to do that which I could do quickly first then return to the more difficult questions. I my teacher also told us that it was important to answer all questions where possible. Oh and to show our workings out.😂
I passed my 11+ with no tutoring and got a place at St Martin in the Fields Grammar School. My twin sister failed and got a place because we were twins. Her life there was miserable, she failed every exam. It was horrible. If kids don't pass the 11+ with no tutoring there are better schools for them than Grammar school
My sister was made to do this when she was nine. She passed with the highest mark. We emigrated soon after but they said they’d hold open her scholarship for five years. Gifted. I missed out as I was too young at the time we emigrated.
Regarding your usage of the word far, I know Americans tend to reply to the question 'how far is ...?' Americans tend to reply with a time, while brits would usually reply with distance, both usually estimated.
I've never seen an 11+ paper with a Comprehension passage quite that long. It was a monster. For me, the best tactic would be to leave it 'til last. Another tactic for Comprehension is to read the questions first underlining or otherwise highlighting summary/key words, then read the text, and finally return to the questions.
Verbal reasoning is something we do subconsciously all the time during everyday sociallising and, well, life in general! Its not something you learn for an exam... you learned it as a child when you learned to communicate. What is being done here is a test to find out how good you are at it. "never used it outside of that one exam"... yes you have, all the time, and its not an exam, its a test.
Never jump into the reading comp portion of a test without reading the questions first. It definitely saves you time
I'm American so I never took a test like this, but as soon as I saw the first full page of text, I thought "oh jeez, I hope he looks at the questions before wasting time reading without any context..." 😅
It also helps to look at other similarly related questions. During the 2015 Cemistry GCSE there were about 3 questions where the answer to one was contained in the previous question. That was about 6 free marks for whoever noticed it. It wasn’t the only paper/test paper where that happened either.
Came here to say this. As you're reading you pick the answers up as you come across them. A lot quicker than reading through the thing again for each question.
It’s not really reading comp though, is it? It’s nothing more than another vocabulary test.
Actual comprehension is understanding things like when a character’s action or words indicate an emotion without overtly naming it; or grasping that a character is aware/unaware of a plot situation because of something they say or do.
Yes, as an ex teacher that would be my advice too.
You've lost all the marks on every question that you circled the answer instead of underlining. They're really strict on that: testing whether you can obey instructions is one of the main points.
Because your future boss from Eton who got the job as hes a mate of the Chairman's son,he needs obedient minions like you to get it right or he may be facing a public enquiry and he was in the Caribbean at the time.
Oh yes1@@janebaker966
Just like I stated, but in a longer way (me that is)
He circled them because it was easier to see on camera. He knew it wasn't what was asked, but he was also filming a video.
@@amieamie6268 Ok. Why be so annoyed?
Just commenting, just like you.
as a brit just wanted to say the test he did was significantly easier than the actual tests. This was a practice
This test does look quite short.
my guy it is designed for 11 year olds going into a grammar school. considering the level of knowledge you would need to successfully pass this exam, it is very hard (speaking as someone doing a Masters in writing)
@@helloitsme472 yea, it is. I have to agree - I passed the 11 plus and was surprised at how high the set score was in order to actually get even a chance to compete for a place in a school. And it isn't about talent or anything like that, but more about memorising. For example, the NVR (non-verbal reasoning) was about memorising things found in past papers and practice tests. The VR (verbal reasoning - like the opposite words) was simply about having a really large vocabulary. I had spent a good amount of times looking at a sheet, just trying to memorise words, their spelling, and definition.
PS: This didn't include the hardest parts of VR, which has things like letter substitution sequences, where you get a word and a code. (e.g. IFMMP - 1 letter back [with the answer being HELLO]
The actual test is much harder than you'd expect, and not only from the sheer difficulty from the questions, but the process of memorising everything. You have to learn a massive variety of questions, and most of them aren't even in the test. It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't done the 11+, but its kinda like learning all of shakespeare's plays, though not knowing which ones you will have a test on.
I passed my 11 plus in 1979 and went to Slough Grammar (later became Upton Grammar) in 1980, but I was right on the line and only just squeezed in. I didn’t actually do that well in my O levels (the precursors to GCSEs), left school and joined the army. It was only later in life that I went to college and then Uni, and funnily enough ended up becoming a computer science teacher! Life is weird.
Something I found out as a teacher is that tests like this are designed to put the student under extreme pressure, particularly with the time limit and also with that long piece of reading. They are almost designed in such a way knowing full well answering all of the questions is impossible.
As a former Grammar school teacher . As a preliminary instruction we always stressed READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AND THE QUESTION carefully.
Then read them again
0:23 - little correction to the note; ‘public school’ is not the UK term for a private school, just a specific subset of them. The rest are just called private schools.
Yes,in my experience, 'private school' & 'public school' are generally interchangeable,the most correct but lesser-used term is 'fee-paying school'.
P.S. Not all English and Welsh counties have the 11+ test [my original county,Kent did and I passed it;however if my family had moved earlier to my later county of Northamptonshire before my due date,then I wouldn't have done it at all.🙄],while Scotland and N.Ireland,both had a separate educ. syllabus to England and Wales.
@@MrSinclairn ‘public school’ refers to a specific subset of private schools. Public schools are generally the ‘old boys club’ variety, whereas private school refers to any school where you pay fees to attend and isn’t run by the state. For example, I attended a private school for comp, and a private sixth form college for my As and A-levels, but neither were classed as public schools.
Private schools are rectangles, but public schools are squares.
@@lordofuzkulak8308 ...but you need to get the right angle on it....
A little correction for you. Public schools and state schools are the same thing in Scotland. Schools where fees are paid are either called private or independent schools. Gordonstoun, where King Charles and his father, Prince Philip were educated is an independent school in Scotland, not a public school.
@@MrSinclairn which makes no sense because linguistically (and in every other sector), public is used as a juxtaposition to private. Public referring to an institution run by a governmental organisation for the public's benefit, whilst private refers to institutions owned by private individuals, corporations or organisations.
One thing to note about grammar schools is that they are generally concentrated into particular areas - and they are only at secondary level, not primary - so it isn't as though there are 160 grammar schools out of even 4,000 secondary schools (let alone all 160,000 state schools). If you live in Kent, Lincolnshire or Buckinghamshire then grammar schools are well and truly part of your local school system - in a small number of towns and cities in other parts of England they might be an option, but in large swathes of the country there just aren't any at all.
F
Great point about Grammar Schools being very location specific !
They’re really prevalent in Gloucestershire too
there’s like 5 in trafford
The issue is the meaning of "Grammar School," in the American dialect of English.
“This isn’t so bad so far”
It’s made for 11 year olds, it’s hard for _them_
Infact for 10 year olds
I was ten when I did mine.
Most are 10 lol and it was easy for me
Basically I passed for Buckinghamshire got 151 BUT there’s catchment. Like I wasn’t in the area for 11 schools only for one but luckily I passed for the number one grammar school (not now) QUE which I got 237
When I took the 11+ (late 2000s) I don't ever remember learning how to do the majority of the questions at school. How well you did was really down to how good your parents were at teaching you/getting you to do practice tests etc. Some people's parents paid for special 11+ tutors. I was about 10 marks or so off of passing but tbh the non-grammar school I went to was great so I'm not bothered. The system just felt a bit unfair.
I took the 11 plus in the late 90s and my sister and brother did 2 and 4 years after me, my brother was close to passing and had to go into some kind of clearing to see how many parents had applied for the preferred school they wanted against 11 plus scores. He was unsuccessful but went to the local comprehensive school. He probably got a better education than me as there was little pressure about proving you're meant to be at a grammar school. At least for me it felt like that
I was told I was going to remedial school based on the mock 11+ my mum made me do ALL the practice tests she could find over 6 months. I was top 2% I chose comprehensive and boy do I regret that.
@@angela-thebooknerdess2110grammar is toxic, it's always a competition between everyone else for grades, everyone is an entitled twat and it leaves you with grade anxiety and fear of not being good enough for the rest of your life
Which 2010s kid has the attention span for this💀
Maybe would be interesting, Evan to sit the tests released at the same time you were 11/16/18 👀
I did the 11+ in 2009, passed by over 60 marks (Medway test) and I didn’t do any practice for it other that what we had to do in lessons at school. My parents didn’t push me to do anything. If you did well in primary school, you’d pass it easily.
I took it in 2004 and got into grammar school in Bucks. I went to a private prep school and everyone (who wasn't going to public secondary) took it extremely seriously - we had all-weekend tutoring on how to take it, lots of kids had private tutors that would work with them every evening on studying for it 😮 so much pressure to put on a 10 year old.
Yes, not exactly an even playing field but I can understand such pressure as it can make such a difference to your future prospects. I don't think there was a 12+ back in the 1970s when I took the 11+.
Really!! My brother & sister both went to grammar school, no private tutoring no cramming they took it and passed. It you need all that help maybe grammar school isn’t for you
@@Phiyedoughyes they’re skyways been, you’d go to comp or secondary and after a year yo could try again so quite a few kids then left for grammar, it’s a great idea because sone children mature more slowly
When I was young, everyone at school had to take the 11+ as you either went to grammar school for boys, or high school for girls, or a Secondary school. There were no comprehensive schools and no-one paid for private tutors. Some were lucky though, as their parents were teachers or had passed the 11+ themselves
Passed the 11+ test which was an 'Oxford and Cambridge' one, a more difficult test - in the late 1950's and out-of 38 Junior School Children in my class only four passed! Was shocked then how few! Three of us went to a brilliant but tough (the cane was used and virtually everyone "took it like a man" and never complained knowing they had done wrong!!!) all boys Grammar school one to a Private. Caught a school bus at 7 30 am to arrive at 8 00am. School ended at 4 15pm, and even had to go to school Saturday morning until 12 15pm!!! Left school at 16 just as they introduced girls.......
I went to college in 2019 and my teacher was so stressed about her son's oncoming 11+ test. Not only she was capable of teaching her son but she also had a tutor prepping him from a year before... It's not that the tuitors are higher quality than teachers at state schools, but the kids get more individual attention, and they have other activities that makes the difference. English class system is very much alive: a lot depends which school you went to and who you know, not what you know. There is also a regional bias, which got again attention during Covid: kids coming from certain schools are automatically marked down even if they buck the trend and do really well! This could be easily remedied by the examiners not given the information but them working blind.
"Can you use a calculator in the 11 Plus?
Calculators are not allowed. Give your child a scrap sheet of paper and encourage them to use it for any rough working out. Your child should mark their answers on the Answer Sheet, not in the test booklet. This is good practice for the real exam which will have a separate answer sheet like this.11 Apr 2023"
In my day (many decades ago), there were no calculators and no-one got 11+ private lessons either. We did take a mock exam and I scored high enough to end up having to show another kid who missed it how to do a mock exam (surely the teacher's job?). And, yes, I got into grammar school and university later on...
I was born in a council house, passed the 11+ in the mid 50s, went to GS and in due course became an engineer, and ended up in contract management. I am now retired but the house that I own is a far cry from the one in which I was born. All thanks to the 11+ and GS.
Teaching another is the best learning experience.
Same with me back in the 80's. We had no prep, no tutoring and no real sense of what the significance of it was. Luckily, I passed and went on to have a good education and went on to have a good career in IT.
I don’t even remember a mock. Our whole class did an exam one day and a few weeks later we got letters and a few had an invitation to apply to a Grammar School. Best thing that ever happened to me. Own own house in a lively village ,after a lengthy career in education. All my brothers still on the estate.
There could also be an 11 month difference in age of those being tested depending in what month they were born. I was actually 10 years and 10 months at the time of the exam. Not so much difference in later life but can make a difference in comprehension and logic. ON starting GS in September I ,and others were II years and one or two months old when many of out classmates were already 12 years old.
I appreciate Evan's love of learning. He has motivated me to learn new things and better myself.
He motivates me to read the instructions then I look at the closely printed tiny words and think,life's too short. I'll just thump it.
The holiday one was wrong as you’re away for two weeks, not all summer
When I did it the verbal reasoning test was deliberately too long so that not everyone finished as a way of further distinguishing between kids. But if you didn't realise you weren't supposed to finish you'd just think you'd done rlly badly which imo isn't fair to put on kid who's got 2 more tests to take that day.
The test is not just about getting the questions right, its about are you smart enough to read ahead, prioritise your workload, and sacrifice bits that you know will slow you down in order to maximise your score.
Thats the difference between smart and really smart. And its the really smart kids we are trying to find. When I did the 11+ in the 1970s, it was to find the top 1% of the kids (at least thats what they told us at the time, it may have changed now). It was really a test to eliminate the bottom 99% of all kids.
Its got to be devious and ruthless to do this. And including a question that is impossible to get right is a great way to introduce the idea that sometimes, things just ain't gonna be fair in this life, so get over it and move on...
Were you not told that? Don’t feeder schools practice practice practice?
@@nicolad8822I didn't go to a feeder school and it wasn't until 6 months before the exam that we even knew I stood a chance of getting through it.
We were fortunate that we could afford some tutoring which helped me out, but a system that requires tutoring to access a higher standard of education is inaccessible to those with lower incomes.
@@nicolad8822 theres a grammar school in my town and I know a coupe of people in my year 6 class did the 11 plus but that was through their parents and private tutors or personal practice
🤣 That's nonsense. But if you need to think that to feel better... I'm a teacher and examiner. We NEVER make tests 'too long' to distinguish between kids. That gives us more marking. If we want to distinguish between kids we just put in harder questions.
I passed, but it was a long time ago, and there were a few more grammar schools then. Before taking it, we were told to not even attempt to do all the questions in order, but to instead make sure we did roughly the same proportion of each of the sections, moving backwards and forwards between them.
One thing I didn't appreciate, at the time, was that Local Education Authorities made the decisions on the number of grammar school places available. Where we lived only 10% could pass but there were twice as many places for boys. In some parts of England up to 20% could pass.
Passed my 11 plus in 1963, no calculator, not even allowed abacus😂
@@Sabraque I did O'levels in 1974. We were possibly the last generation that turned up to exams with a book of Log tables, but for some reason nobody taught us how to use a slide rule.
@@GlasPthalocyanine - I took my exams 1983 … they were a mixture of mainly O-levels plus couple of rebranded GCSE’s but they were still referred to as O-levels. We were not allowed calculators in any exams and had to use log tables. I think we were the final year that used them. My school was still transitioning from being a grammar school to becoming a comprehensive so I also had to pass the 11+ … I was the only student from my primary school that went there.
I loved log tables best help ever 😂😂
20:18
When I did the 11+ (in 1963) I remember thinking about how ridiculous such questions were: if there were fewer librarians they would be chatting less, and would get the job done much more quickly. But that's the logic of an 11-year-old.
We also had questions about baths with plugs removed, and taps running, having to work out how quickly the bath would fill. As I had already experimented with tin cans with holes, and water of different depths, I knew that the deeper the water the quicker the outflow. I remember making a comment on the exam paper to say it was a silly question, explaining why, and how I would go about answering it correctly, adding the answer that they wanted. I realised several years later that in the exam I had invented calculus!
Hello! Sorry if this is a personal question, I am currently studying Sociology A-level and this is one of the topics. Did you get into the grammar school? How was your experience if you did? Were children there mostly from a middle/upper class?
There's a character in Neal Stevenson's book 'Cryptonomicon', a mathematical genius, that does something similar on his intake test when drafted to the navy. He spends that long working out a method to account for the difference in current due to width and bends for the first question (a boat traveling downriver between two cities, diagram to illustrate) that he doesn't answer any other questions and ends with a score so low he's only qualified to play a xylophone in a Navy band. He did however rewrite his notes for that question and have them published in an academic journal as he'd discovered some interesting new ideas about hydrodynamics.
@@dvrinai know this question wasnt directed at me but i thought id answer anyway.
i got into a grammar school in 2018 through self practice with no tutors. it was definitely mostly upper-middle class, but there were quite a lot of people like myself aswell who weren’t and recieved free school meals etc
when i did the compehension i usually never read the text just looked at the question and picked out what i needed
Yeah thats how I did it too... its a kind of "cheating" way of getting a result in the minimum time, but of course, thats exactly the sort of kid we are looking for!
this text was way to long and uninteresting. I fell as sleep after the first paragraph.
In 1957 aged 10, I sat and failed the first part of the 11+ exam, and consequently I was sent to a Secondary Modern school, from which I left aged 15. After six years as a Fitter/Machinist apprentice and achieving a City and Guilds Full Mechanical Technicians Certificate, I moved up to the drawing office. After redundancy, and a year as a fencing sub contractor, I moved to Edinburgh and worked as a draughtsman for two years, before training as a Technical Education teacher. In the late 1970s as the first computers came into schools, I moved across to teaching Computing and IT. I retired in 2008 as the head of Computing & IT, and Network Manager at a large Edinburgh High School. In the autumn of 2008 I took some extra mural classes in Philosophy at Edinburgh University, and gained entry to do a Philosophy degree starting in autumn 2009. I graduated in June 2013 with a 2:1 MA Honours degree in Philosophy. In all my life the only exam I have failed was that 11+. Yet it haunted me until one day in a Hellenistic Philosophy lecture, I was able to answer questions that taught Masters students were not. At that point the impostor syndrome fell away, and I stopped apologising for myself, aged 64.
The 11+ is extremely destructive, and can in no way be a predictor of what a person can achieve. I hold a vocational engineering qualification, two professional teaching qualifications, and a graduate academic qualification. All of which, my 1957 11+ result suggested was not possible.
Obviously, you have excelled but I would argue that the Guys who failed the 11+ back in our day ( 1965 for me) were not so strong, "in general", academically, and, virtually, every Guy that I knew from my Grammar School went on to achieve varying degrees of success and made good life choices.
I would suggest that you are one of many "exceptions to the rule", my friend.
In 1959 (aged 11 ) me and 90 others from our small (Catholic) primary school sat the 11+. 11 "passed". Judged worthy of "good" education. For me that meant that I had to suffer through Latin and French at which I was ( and remain ) hopeless and have no experience of woodwork, metalwork and tech drawing. Despite my fairly good maths and science results I couldn't get an engineering place at university following my failure in French. Why not polytechnic study? Total failure of careers education.
Several of the 80 who "failed" were definitely smarted than me and two at least never recovered from this branding..... what a dumb ,evil system... damn... getting worked up thinking on it...... too old and hopefully its over now , probably replaced by something just as grim, but perhaps not so obviously unjust.
And, errrr ... impressively done you ( if its acceptable to offer accolades to ones senior and superior 🤗 )
@@jackieking1522 Hi Jackie. How very DARE you, Madam:) "One's Senior?" As I said I took my 11+ in 1965, Young Lady, as opposed to your 1959 lol
Funnily enough, that last paragraph you sent does not appear here.. I got found out at Grammar School because Primary School subjects played to my strengths (Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, etc) but at Grammar,I did not like Woodwork and tech drawing NIL%, literally. The Sciences, Art, Music, German and Latin. There is not a great deal left though I DO remember 1/7th is 14.28% and how to convert F to Centigrade so 68-32=36, Divide 9=4 x 5=20 Degrees Censius.VERY useful
That message was intended for DickusCopernicus, who is older than both of us.
Now I've registered you "name " as well...... do you live on Skye? Do you know Lynn Adamson? And this isn't Jackie writing.... its her husband.@@Isleofskye
a lot of Grammar School 6th forms were full of sec. mod kids who took transfer exam 15+ and or got half a dozen O level exams.
This was so much fun! I did the 11+ but ultimately got an assisted place at a private school. I used to LOVE IT! One tip (don't know if it's the right thing to do but it worked for me) I always read the questions for the comprehension first and scanned the text afterwards
I was about to suggest the same thing. You'll pick up some answers along the way without having to scan the article multiple times.
I went to Grammar School and one thing we could all do is hold a pen properly...🤣🤣
That's because when we went to school, one of the first thing's we were taught was, how to hold a pencil then a pen properly, we were also taught how to join letter of a word up correctly.
When I went to Grammar school we had to learn how to use nib ink pens and ink wells.
Me too, but that was in Junior school for me.
You had it easy. In my day, we used clay tablets and a stick! 😊
We did our exams with a fountain pen!
Many congratulations on sticking to what looks like an impossible task, especially in a culture with which you're not completely familiar. I passed the 11+ sixty years ago without breaking sweat - under this sort of time pressure I'd have collapsed in a heap ten minutes in. I guess the designers know what they're looking for, but it seems a pity to reject so many pupils who can give accurate and thoughtful answers, but not instantly - we need ponderers, and there's even such a thing as constructive dithering.
Well. I passed the 11+ 59 years ago, also without breaking sweat. It took all day, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., although that included breaks between papers, of which there were two or three. It wasn't a swift 45-minute job. Nevertheless, I do remember it was a bit of a push to answer all the questions in the time available and check your answers. Most children failed to finish. I feel this was (and is) deliberate. Grammar schools are basically all about passing exams, all of which are time-limited, so they don't cater for pupils, however bright, who are nonetheless slow.
It struck me that this very long passage is designed to screen out kids who have any cognitive problems like dyslexia & ADD, or whose nerves get the better of them. Grammar schools do NOT want them, no matter how smart they are.
@@eh1702 Absolutely. When Evan started to read the thing aloud, I thought “Oh no, he's buggered. This is what the dimwits who can't read without moving their lips do.”
@@allenwilliams1306 I’m not sure what your point is. He read it out for the viewers: some people watch on their phones.
Extremely able and intelligent people can have dyslexia or ADD. Or anxiety, for that matter. This is the idiocy of the 11+. It takes no account of the outliers, people who may have more potential than most but who develop at different rates.
(An extreme example would be Jason Arday. Early on, diagnosed with autism and global development. Could not speak until he was 11, learned to read & write at 18. At 37, became a professor at the University of Cambridge.)
This test as we see it here does not test potential at ALL, it mostly tests whether kids know test-setters’ tricks and a rather inflated middle-class Home Counties vocabulary and register.
(eg the question asking to identify which words are “superfluous” is actually a clumsy use of the word superfluous.)
It relies very heavily on screening out kids who have not been exposed much to that class dialect and its Latinate (in the test often quite contrived) vocabulary. A huge proportion of the test is in fact all about vocabulary, including what initially looks like a reading comprehension test.
It’s a crappy piece of writing, by the way, as writing.
It would be difficult to formulate questions about that story that test the ability to actually comprehend - to read between the lines, to infer a plot development, say, or a character’s thoughts or emotions that aren’t being overtly described. It’s constructed purely to test vocabulary, but so are most of the questions in the first half of the paper.
@@eh1702 i am not disagreeing with you, apart from the “class discrimination” point. My point is that the test is designed to identify those most capable of benefiting from a grammar school environment, and this does not include late developers, or those with limited vocabulary, autism, dyslexia, or other learning difficulties. Nor does it include those who read with a finger moving from word to word, mentally “reading aloud”. Evan actually read aloud for the sake of the video, thus making it impossible to finish the test in good time.
I took the 11+ in 1975. My ( very ordinary rural) primary school did not coach us or give us practice tests. We were not told beforehand that we were sitting it, we just went in one morning and did it! By far the best way to establish who was suitable to go to the grammar school. It also ensured that we were not stressed or worried beforehand. My mother at the time felt that If one needed to give one’s child extra help or coaching to pass….maybe they would be happier not going and staying in the comprehensive system. 🤔
Exactly my experience (in 1968) - we were never told we were taking the 11+, and I didn't know I had until my parents were looking at secondary schools and were able to include the local grammars because I'd passed! Mind you, that county abolished the 11+ a couple of years later, so I think they were winding it down anyway.
@@mikeford4055 yes, our area was winding down too and the girls grammar school I attended stopped any intakes 2 years after me. When I sat my A levels in 1983 we only had Upper and Lower 6th and the 5th formers sitting their O levels. Sad really 😞.
The only fair system would be to operate the System used in some states in Germany. In Nord Rhein Westfalen they have 30% going to Grammar Schools who are easy to teach and are in classes of 40 children from the age of 10 to 18, They take the Abitur ( Alevels _ and go to University. The middle ability children go to the Realschulen /Middle Schools . The children are in classes of 25 .They tske the Mittlereife/ GCSE at16 and go on to Technical apprenticeships from age16 to20.they are only paid for their final year of their apprenticeships.
The least able children go to Hauptschulen / Secondary modern schools. The children are in classes of 10 children and their teachers are paid extra They do a leaving exam at 15 or16 and go on to a 5 year craft apprenticeship. . They carry on with their basic education until they are 18, learning German, Maths, combined science , English and Humanities. learning their craft at the same time. They then do 3 years half time at College and half time at their work-place. They all leave school;/ college with the Mittlereife and a professionAl qualifcation. The drop out rate from all schppls is 2% for Germans but up to 14% for immigrants , who do nor speak German at home. The results are much better than Hessen and Berlin and other States which have Comprehensive Schools.
Our Comprehensive system is failing the brightest children. as there may be as few as 14% of above average children in a typical Comprehensive school . Most former Communist States have reverted to the Tri-partite system and are doing well It is the tri-partite system that has made Germany the most prosperous country. in Europe . The least able children do much better there because their teachers are very well paid and the least able children get individual teaching. I meet our family friend and the children from the Hauptscule where he is Head Teacher , every year in Salisbury . At 17 , they can all speak Engllish really well and delight in talking to me in English to show off their skills in English. Also all German children are tested in their different types of schoo; in February and June and are given grades from 1 to 6 for attainment and effort. Those who get grades 1 to 4 , move up to the next yearlevel in September but those who get grade 5 or 6 repeat the year they have just been in.
I took the 11+ in a market town in Suffolk. One day at school we were shepherded into the biggest classroom set up as an exam room, seated, told not to speak to anybody and do the test. No practice, no coaching no nothing. We knew about the 11+ but were completely blindsided. I took the test, then forgot all about it until the results came through. Only 3 girls had passed (I don't know how many boys) including me and I had to leave my friends behind to go to grammar. I wasn't happy!
@@anakei160 I was the only girl to pass. So I can totally empathise with leaving friends behind. In hindsight it was a bit divisive and I was lonely for a time. Even when I made new friends at the grammar school it had such a large catchment area that I felt quite isolated during the school holidays. Got a cracking education though..🤔
Today I learnt that the 11+ is different in different counties. I didn't remember any of this when I sat the paper back in the late 00s, so I looked up the test for my area (Bucks). It's all multiple choice, with way bigger focus on the verbal & non-verbal reasoning (honestly my favourite parts). The pass mark to get into grammar schools was 121, you sat two tests and took the best mark. I think I got a score around 122, just enough to get into a grammar school. My parents took me to a private tutor for 2 or 3 sessions which I think played a part.
yep! for my county (herts) the pass mark depends on the school, but for example the pass mark is 215 here.
Oh! I never realised it was different! I also grew up in bucks, getting into a grammar school as well, and thought the test was the same nationally
I wanted to prove to my girlfriend that I went to an objectively terribly school, so I checked the OFSTED reports on the year I finished school. The metric they used was something like the percentage of students that got three or more A to C grades in their GCSEs.
The national average was about 45%. My girlfriend went to a grammar school and it was 100%! Seriously.
My school came in at a measly 14%.
The only reason it was 100% at the grammar school is because they don't take anyone who won't get it so you can't tell at all if its a good school or not because those kids will likely get those grades elsewhere
@@justanotherpiccplayer3511 That's not really true. Grammar schools take kids with higher IQs and general aptitude, but they still need to do a good job of teaching over the five years to achieve good GCSE results. And you can't guarantee that the kids would achieve as highly at another school where the classes are forced to move at the pace of the slowest student in the room.
I went to a special school and got 5 (I know it's not many) REALLY high grades. Had I done mainstream or even grammar, they'd have been far lower but I'd have had more GCSEs. Personally, I think 5 A's, B's and C's are better than 10+ D's and E's.
@@SammiLeighPalmerthis is where I think my kids' school must have done well. We are a grammar area and yet both parts (boy/girl) of their school got nearly 90% pass rate in 5 GCSEs a-c (strong passes 5+). They didn’t restrict entry to exams either. The grammar was 100% but realistically unless a kid is really defiant and unwilling to study a strong pass was expected. The higher grades were more variable.
@@adrianboardman162 5 A-C grades is the aim to be employable so well done :)
There were no calculators when I sat the 11 plus in 1958. I have no memory at all of doing "practice tests", all these types of questions were contained in our general day to day learning. I can remember that I really enjoyed the challenge of problem solving in the 11 plus. (I did pass).
My mum took the 11+ exam. She passed. She would have gone to a grammar school. She unfortunately moved to Canada at 12, and she was behind in her learning due to that.
But no less smart. Your level of intellect never alters.
Behind in her learning in what way? The Canadian education was poorer than the Grammar School would have been? She was upset by the move?
@@nicolad8822 I'm guessing, she was behind, in the sense that what is taught is different.
Depending on the date and area of Canada, she would have had to learn a new language (French), which was probably not taught at her English Primary school.
Also would need to learn Canadian English.
I'm guessing the basic/common knowledge of History and Geography will be different.
A basic understanding of weather will be different.
It would be difficult to know what you don't know, now, but used to understand easily.
Canadian educational standards are different to those of the UK - it doesn't mean that she was behind in her learning - you don't "lose" intelligence... Canada just emphasizes other things than the UK does.
I did all of my schooling in the UK, including a science-based PhD - I now work in post-secondary ed in Canada... The expectations are slightly different but not any less.
Part of the problem is that kids go to school far earlier in the UK than they do in Canada - Canadians are about a year behind. My youngest child when we moved went back to half-day kindergarten when she had been in school full time. And it is pretty much agreed that A levels are the equivalent to the first year of a University degree in Canada
What frustrates me more is the self-entitlement of Canadian students when compared to those in the UK! They all want and expect to be "Spoon-fed" the info rather than finding it out for themselves! But that might be part of the internet generation as well...
Your mum would also have had to learn Canadian history, geography etc which was not taught in the UK... And depending on the province, she may also have had to learn to speak French fluently - while French is taught in the UK, it is not taught at the same level that it is in some of the bilingual provinces. French is also not taught in junior schools in the UK....
My grandchildren learnt French in junior school we live in 🇬🇧
Took this 55 years ago and passed, best thing I ever did, it allowed me to do O and A Levels and go to University when only 5% of the population did, it changed my life for the better. Unfortunately many of my school friends did not pass and it changed their lives for the worst. Now we have a system totally dominated by tests and middle class parents who are vociferous, I don't know which is better, we certainly had deeply committed teachers,who put in many many unpaid hours, but then they were teaching children who could sit still and listen for short periods and knew how to behave, and this was in a multicultural inner city working class school.
reading up about the old school system always infuriates me, the fact so many people couldn't do exams and go to higher education based on a test at 11 years old is crazy
Changed their lives for the worst? No it did not necessarily. Plenty of them will have ended up with very good technical jobs and ended up in management, started their own businesses, joined the military and risen through the ranks. Meanwhile many of the Grammar School kids ended up in very dull office jobs.
@@nicolad8822 This is true, but same goes for anyone nowadays who goes to college to learn a trade or apprenticeship etc. The old system didn’t allow much of a choice for non grammar students
Took 11plus in 1952 few passed in working class area, most went on to Apprenticeship nobody unemployed everyone into work,didn’t know anyone going to University
"Going on holiday for a fortnight" refers to how long your holiday is. "Going on holiday in a fortnight" refers to when you are going on holiday
For... How long
In... Tells when
Had he substituted "week" for "summer" maybe it would have been clearer.
It always annoyed me that a lot of the kids who passed the 11+ were the ones whose parents could afford to pay for tutors, so it was essentially a cheaper version of private school for the more well off parents. Of course there were some naturally bright who would get in, but having tutors made a big difference
The ones who needed tutors to get in never did as well though
It really didn't. No wealthy parent ever chose to send their kid to a grammar school if a private/public school was available because every wealthy parent knows private school life leads to wealthy careers! Grammar schools have always been for the kids whose parents had aspirations - not money. So no money for private tutors. I've heard this myth for nearly 40 years. I've not yet met anyone who got into a grammar school because their parents could afford a tutor but not school fees.
I was just speaking from my experience. There were quite a few grammar schools in my area and also quite a few private schools, but fees for private school were c£10k a year which is a lot more than tutors. I imagine it does vary from place to place
I'd guess the 11+ changed over time. From what I remember of the exam in the early 70s, it was a lot more Maths and logic. I don't think it was necessary to coach children but our school was divided into children who were *expected* to pass, and those who weren't. I wasn't expected to pass, didn't get any extra help, but passed anyway. So did my sister.
It was the middle classes who were most against grammar schools in the 60s. The upper classes sent their children to public schools anyway. The working class welcomed the opportunity for some of their children. The middle class resented that places that they felt should have gone to their children were going to the working class.
Now though the price of housing in catchment areas somewhat restricts the better non-private schools to the middle class.
My parent would have paid for me to go even if I had failed the 11+ assuming I still passed the entrance exam. My father and uncle had both been and become doctors, but their parents were working class (mill-workers). My uncle got a scholarship.
I failed the entrance exam for the prep when 7, and then my parents got me a tutor and I got in at 8. Everyone in the prep passed the entrance exam. We were about about a third of those who entered the main school in my year.
Can't believe I sat here and watched a guy I don't know take a defunct test I never took , Enjoyed it Thanks for your content
I hope Evan does a community video on this video because I think the comments are really good discussion 🙂
Grammar schools were much more numerous until about 1974, when politicians decided to close them all down and convert to a 'comprehensive' school system for all children. I was in one which became a comprehensive, during my final two years of secondary schooling. That school had existed for over 200 years.
The closure of grammar schools was a backward step in several ways, not least because the standard of teaching dropped immediately to one which was more suited to the 'average' student; a student who does not exist. The specialisation of subjects to which we had become accustomed was lost. And having worked hard to pass the 11+ exams, five years earlier, we felt let down by the negation of its purpose.
Some grammar schools had the influence and wherewithal to resist the new legislation, and they continue to provide a valuable service for those relatively few students who are fortunate enough to be able to attend them.
This seems easier than when I took my 11+s (I attend a grammar school). I love that you take these tests for us.
I passed for grammar school but that was in 1966. We weren’t told what our level of pass mark was.
There was no passmark.
Kids were ranked and a line was drawn across
based on the number of grammar school places available.
It varied slightly year by year. I passed in 1976. I later found out
the 'pass mark' was an IQ of 115+
I passed in 1970 and no we weren’t told how well we did just if we passed, so I went to Gillingham Grammar School but they went to secondary a year after I went there. My parents removed me and sent me to boarding school instead. Not so sure I benefited from a better education but I most definitely benefited from the contacts I made.
@@Sofasurfa .. "went to secondary"...? They actually merged with another school, moved to Rainham, and became a bi-lateral school, which is NOT the same thing at all.
@@fredbear3915 I always tend to forget that folk only think of Gillingham in Kent rather than Gillingham in Dorset. The school was founded in 1516 the first Grammar School in Dorset, has the White Hart as it’s emblem and when I attended, we wore red blazers, navy pleated skirts white socks, and black brogues (saddles, white ankle socks and red gingham dresses in the summer, boys could wear grey short pants if they chose to.) Although I remember them changing the summer dress to some weird navy blue print in the late seventies. I was only there for a year. I believe it now operates as a Voluntary Controlled School.
Thank you for making me feel better about not passing the 11+ in a school where we did no practice or test prep!
Your question “ what have I learned?” Since your marking was bad, due to the fact that you marked as correct answers where you did not follow the instructions. Your score was less than 60 so a complete fail. Having taught test taking the really vital point is to read and follow the instructions. You completely failed on that point.
It is likely that the USA looks for correct answers and ignores or doesn’t specify ask for tests to be done in an exact way.
However you are testing for an extremely selective, highly valued admission so will be marked down for incorrect format.
Also eyeglasses is totally inappropriate in an English school. You wear glasses or sunglasses.
You do not PASS OR FAIL the 11+. It is or was a test to see if you were more suited to an academic career or more practical education. In my case I went to grammar school but struggled. I would have been better going to a tech college.
Reading out loud can slow your reading speed pretty significantly so its no wonder you didn't have time for the rest of the questions 😂 but some of these questions are pretty unreasonable to imagine a 6th grader doing so quickly even a smart one.
I'd also read the questions first so I knew what to look for in the text.
I agree, Evan should have given himself maybe an extra 3 minutes to compensate for this reading out loud. I did think about this at the time as he was reading.
Yeah its unreasonable, but you gotta eliminate the vasty majority of the kids taking the test. You don't want the smart ones, you only want the very smart ones.
Then, once you have identified the cream of the cream, you can send them off to a crap grammar school where they will eventually become bankers and politicians, and ruin the world. Sorry I mean RUN the world.... (oops!)😁
I reckon I would have been more likely to ace this test as a kid because it would all be fresh in my brain! I feel like I've lost the majority of stuff I knew from school, especially about maths. I'm a writer though, so hopefully I'd still do well at the English part 😆
The maths was the tricky part for me since I have dyscalculia, but I still passed my 11+ with one of the highest marks in the entire country for that year (we knew someone who knew the examination board members so he asked afterwards what my exact mark was, the paperwork just said pass vs fail). I remember it being easy though. But then exams are easy for me in general. Its just regurgitating stuff that's easy to soak up just by listening & copying everything off the board (I never figured out how to revise). Now homework and coursework and dissertations at university, now those were hard. They always had a deadline at some distant point in the "not now" and they'd be months away right up until the day before & then it was just a panicked rush. Oh and I'm not sure 6th grader is the really same thing as year 6. Year 6 is age 10-11, the last year of primary school. 6th grade in America seems to be 11-12 which is 1st year of secondary school here (years 7 to 11 being mandatory, 12 & 13 are for doing A Levels). I was 10 when I took my 11+
It’s always handy when your mentors know the people who design and control the system. The kids in classes of 35 whose own teachers had no clue about the 11+ and its VERY specific culture were at a great disadvantage to you. As usual, privileged people are spectacularly unaware of how un-priveleged others are. The 11+, as we can tell from this guy, is also very much a test of upper-middle-class Home Counties culture. People from other classes and other places need people to consciously enculturate them to it.
There are still grammar schools in Scotland.
The grammar school I went to years ago didn't do 11+ exam since the grammar school is the only secondary school within 7 to 15 or so miles and the school has a dorm for students who live further away from the town.
I guess the school didn't give out that test to the local kids since, you know, it's the only secondary school for miles.
There are no *state* grammar schools in Scotland or Wales any more. The only grammar schools there now are independent, fee-paying schools that retain the grammar name based on their use of selective entrance exams, but aren't comparable to English grammar schools.
Was a boat involved to escape the place that pretended to be an island even though it wasn’t.
If so yeah it’s the Oooooold name from when it was selective entrance.
)went there too)
I passed the 11+ in 1957. We went into school one day and the teacher said 'today you are going to do a test' or words to that effect. My memory is that it was more reasoning than the one you did, pages of those puzzles. It was all so low key that I didn't give it any more thought and eventually I was told I was accepted for grammar school, though I was not in the first round of offers.
Same for me but in 1960. The idea of private tutors had me rolling with laughter. Nobody I knew had money for that.
I took 11+ in 1967. My experience was exactly the same.
I did exactly that in 1970. Don't remember anything at all about it, but I passed, for all the good it did.
I did mine in 1957 as well. I was in a small village school with one class and an elderly, motherly teacher, who’d spent a lot of time reading Dickens to us or helping us grow turnips in the school ‘plot’.
Lambs to the slaughter to be honest. We didn’t stand a chance.
I ended up in a ‘secondary modern school for boys’, a euphemism for a soft borstal.
My education started at age fifteen when I finished state schooling and started night school, followed by college. It saved my bacon!
Yes! I did 3 grammar school entrance tests (not technically called 11+), each school or group of schools has their own test, I passed one, it had an element you couldn't prepare for by tutoring and I got in, great school.
You should try an English Proficency Exam. At least the Grammar and Use of English part. We, non-native, are told that even native speakers would fail this exam if they don't train for it.
The reading part asks about the intention of the text and there's really tricky questions. I'd love to see an American trying!
Evan is not an average American, that is probably why he no longer lives in the USA!
@@klimtkahlothat makes it sound like he has super powers lol
I trained as an English language teacher and can confirm I had to study grammar almost from scratch because we were never taught it you just sort of picked it up by instinct so I couldn't name or describe most of the tenses etc., and English is a ridiculous language that anyone who studies it as a non-native deserves huge respect for mastering.
@@AmalaFrequents Is that a good example of how you normally construct a sentence?
I disagree with your statement about the Use of English exam. I did it without any lessons or tutoring and found it very easy. It was along time ago but might explain why as a scientist I ended up with 4 O level equivalents in English and English lit A level
Describing how far away something is in minutes rather than distance is another one of your Americanisms shining through
Yes, I came here to see if anyone had said this - in the UK, "how far?" would definitely mean distance, never time. Even if I only really knew how long it took to get somewhere, if someone asked "how far ...?" I'd answer with something like "it takes an hour in the car on good roads, so I'd guess about 35 miles".
Huh? We do it all the time in the UK! I use time to describe how far away something is because more often than not I don't even know the distance. I just asked my husband how far it was into town from where we live and he replied "Oh, about 25 minutes walking".
@@PurplePenny13 ok, but your husband was not answering a test, analyzing a graphic with meters/hours as variants, was he?
@@helenan7368 Makes no difference as the poster claimed that in the UK "how far" would never be answered as a time. That appears to be as a general statement , no mention of specifically an exam answer .The second respondent added an example based on someone asking *them* the question "how far", thus showing that they too took the scope of the statement to be wider than the answer to an 11+ exam.
Very American, all distance are in time, which is a big fail whe an airport is only 12 miles away, but 45 minutes in time due to traffic.
You didnt mention the 67 grammar schools in northern ireland, where roughly a third of kids go to a grammar school, so it's the region of the uk where grammar schools are more of a thing than in any other region.
The 11+ is a strange and unusual form of torture
Hell yeah! And in my day, we did several similar tests so you never actually knew which one was "the one" nor did you ever find out your score. Its was only either yes you passed, or no you didn't pass. (nobody ever used the word "fail"... I imagine in the same way that courts never use the word "innocent"... you are either guilty or not-guilty. Never "innocent". (Yeah I know, the Scots have another option too..."not proven", before somebody picks me up on it!)
No its not. As with anything, if you can do the task, its often fun.
No, it is not.
I took 11 plus exams 59 years ago and was accepted to both my local (Isleworth) grammar school, and to the Latymer Upper school in London, Chose the former as it was only a 1 mile walk/cycle rather than 1 hour bus trek. I think I achieved about 90-95% but do not remember the paper being that hard!
LOL I did the same but the opposite - 42 years ago. Went to Godolphin because it was much closer than my grammar school options
Oooh, Latymer! For those who don't know, this is a very, very good school.
Your summer holiday answer changed the meaning - you said they were going away for the summer (i.e. for the whole summer) in a fortnight's time. They wanted you to say that they were going away for two weeks during the summer. It's still a sentence that works, but it doesn't mean the same thing.
I enjoyed this enormously brought back memories of O's and A's, much more fun seeing you doing it than doing it myself
Hi Evan - no marks for uk/usa difference. My British son did the US Sats and went through the US university system, no allowance whatsoever for differences there so he took an extra credits to fix that problem. Good job for trying it. Most children who do and pass it, will not willing do it again 😂😂😂
When you do a comprehension test it helps to read the questions first as you will pick up and focus on relevant passages so when you go back to it. At least that what I was taught back in the sixties/seventies.
I am so here for this.
I’m one of 6 children and we all passed the 11+ in the 1960s-70s, working class family with no books at home but parents who encouraged us to learn
It was so funny seeing you struggle with an exam that I passed as a 10 year old! Unfortunately for me, the year I took the exam was the first year that you no longer went to Grammer school if you passed it. I always felt cheated by that, as Grammer schools were so much better than Comprehensives. Years later they changed the rules back again, and the son of one of my best friends went to Grammer school. He could go horse riding or play golf in his sports lessons! Mind you, it was much more strict when it came to grades. He passed all of his GCSE exams, but he was only allowed to get a couple of grades below A. Unfortunately three of his grades were a B, so he wasn't allowed to stay on and take his A levels! He had to leave all his friends and find a 6th form college somewhere else! They have very high standards, but are sometimes quite brutal.
I will say that not all grammar schools are that crazy! I went to a grammar school *fairly* recently, and we had the same entry grades for a levels as the other schools in the area. We certainly didn't have the money to do anything different for sports options. Honestly, I just they're schools that are aimed at a certain kind of person. While I think I got a very good education there, it set me up with a lot of issues down the road, such as massive academic insecurities and constant guilt if I wasn't working. There never really was a work life balance, but it was still the right environment for me. It's interesting to compare though, because I know for sure some grammar schools can be insane
There was never a thing where one went to grammar schools just because they passed an 11+. The test was only ever something where grammar schools could use the outcome to determine if they wanted to offer you a place - but if 100 kids passed the 11+ and the school only has 30 places, then they offer the top 30 kids those spots. It was never a guaranteed place.
As for standards - we have the same at my current comp, and at EVERY school I've worked at for decades - whether state, private, religious, public, or academy. Why would any school allow students to stay on to study A-Levels if they haven't shown themselves to be able to handle the work? It's the same way universities work.
As for playing golf and going horse-riding - yep, my current state school has that for kids too. They've also done sailing lessons, have the Duke of Edinburgh Award, have taken kids to do trips and voluntary work around the world, take them on ski trips every year, do the language exchange stays, etc etc.
GRAMMAR SCHOOLS AREN'T SPECIAL.
grammAr schools
And we had to undergo an interview too. @@hellfirepictures
A good education does not mean an eye for small details methinks@@MrTonyHeath
In Northern Ireland they're called transfer tests, which replaced 11+ tests a good long time ago. The new system introduced this year is SEAG, two tests results added together.
My gosh that brings back memories (and yes I passed thank goodness)
Don't forget Evan that you don't go into these exams without months of prep so that by the time you get there you know what to expect
This isn't the case in Buckinghamshire. All children are entered unless withdrawn by parents, but state schools aren't officially allowed to prep for it so children only get prior experience if their parents pay for a tutor or buy practice books. (Some schools do CATs which are a similar style though). The first my kids knew of the test format was the official practice 2 days before.
Youngest qualified (not allowed to say pass!) & it's apparently very obvious that a fair number of classmates are there as a result of tutoring rather than ability. Obviously this probably means some children missed out who should have been there as scores are scaled on a curve so the to 25-30% qualify.
Me, wife, two kids - both Masters graduates - all grammar school educated.
For those that can stand the pace, which is what the 11+ is about, it's the best education around.
"Coaches" make a lot of money, but their impact is marginal, you've either got it or not.
My wife worked in primary education for years and teachers had a good idea which was which early on.
Those that manage to bluff it soon struggle once they get to the grammar.
Love from Lincolnshire.
if you're able to get into a grammar school, you'll learn better. if not, you'll learn better in a public school. grammar school students are usually of a similar ability so teachers don't have to spend as much time helping children who struggle while holding back students who could move on and learn better
One of the best things I learned by my 7th grade teacher was to read the questions before the text on tests and then just fast read/scan the actual text for the things you needed for the questions. I was a slow render, so if I had to read the whole text I would have spend 50% of my time just doing that.
*MENTAL* arithmetic: *0.62 plus 1.37 is 1.99* which is nearly 2; *subtract 2 from 6.51 gives you 4.51*. However, you have to add back 0.1 (which you added to the 1.99 and subtracted *that* from the 6.51) so the answer is *4.52*. Took me like 3 seconds!
I went to a Grammar school and me and my friend who didn't pass and when to the local secondary school and we got EXACTLY the same grades at GCSE. It made no difference that I went to a grammar school!
had me audibly giggling during your edit of the reading of the story! Great job!
"Summer + fortnight": In English it is "place" before "time". This is always a trick question on English exams in Dutch schools because it is "time" before "place" in Dutch, and the English order is counter-intuative to us.
But enhlish native speakers aren't strongly aware of this. Doing it wrong just looks faguely odd to them, and they can't tell you why. But now you know. 😂
Time, manner, place was the rule at one of the top grammar schools in the North of England in the 1950s, and woe betide anyone who split the infinitive or placed a preposition at the end of a sentence.
this was super interesting as someone that went to a grammar school! whilst i don't remember much of the actual test i *do* remember that someome in my exam room had to be removed cos they were crying...
It's always interesting to see these tests. Would you consider giving the CPE (Cambridge English Proficiency C2) a go next? :)
Oh, the memories of doing my 11+ back in the 80s such fun and so humbling.
11+ exams are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT depending upon where they are sat. Each borough/county that uses them writes their own (this has always been the case). There is no standardised 11+ across the country. Meaning a score attained on an 11+ test in one borough/county will not necessarily be the same in another, especially as they don't all assess exactly the same skills. Kent County has the broadest of tests, with some other counties assessing only two skills.
These days, 11+ (or 10+ or 12+) exams are taken voluntarily and are not sat by the entire year group of an area.
Students also sit the Common Entrance Exam at age 13 - typically used by kids at Prep/Middle schools looking to get into specific private/public/grammar/selective schools for their GCSE years.
The Birmingham one is supposed to be horrendous. Especially as there are very few decent non selective schools here. The ones that accept 11+ failures consider anyone who gets to year 11 without being locked up in a YOI or dead due to gang violence as a success
@@dasy2k1 Codswhallop. I taught there for a decade and my friends still do. At no point would we ever set the bar so low. And as one school I worked in was the actual bottom of the country - but my students became doctors, pharmacists, accountants, sound engineers, radio DJs, an officer in the army, a lawyer, and on and on, I think I have enough experience to know that you're talking nonsense.
The test isn't 'horrendous'. Kids are just under educated due to the high levels of poverty, immigrants (second language speakers), and a culture of parents being disinterested in their kids education.
Many decades ago, my generation sat the Seven Plus, the Nine Plus and the Eleven Plus. To this day, I can remember the sick feeling that the rush of adreneline brings to the body, in the year before these tests were put in front of us. We were living in a high stress state of mind and those of us who passed, did (in effect) have our grammar school education taken from us, thanks to MP Shirley Williams and her "education reforms". It goes without saying that Williams did not subject her own daughter to the "comp System" and her daughter was educated in a grammar school.
I think at my school we were preparing for the 11+ from the age of four. In the infants school repeating our multiplication tables was a daily ritual at the end of each day. I'm surprised that in my office some of the younger employees are unable to perform a basic calculation without use of a calculator. In primary school we used an exercise book called Daily Ten. The questions covered all the subjects we would need for the 11+. It was like a daily, mini version of the 11+. Our construction, grammar and spelling was corrected. This was in an ordinary state school and I believe most schools then would have followed the same curriculum. Actual results were not revealed but I must have done well as my Headmaster told my parents he was sure that, based on my results, he would be able to secure for me a scholarship to a public school. My parents were of the opinion that I would have felt "Out of place" at a public school. I attended instead a Grammar School for boys which had traditional and high standards. When I see the state of education in the UK today it makes me weep.
I wonder how modern kids do at this
Went to a grammar school in Northern Ireland growing up and this brings back so many memories! Mainly forced practice tests all summer the term before haha
I'm teaching Y6 rn as part of my PGCE/QTS qualification and we've had some kids out doing entrance exams for secondary. No wonder they've needed to take a bit of extra time before coming back in to school. This is so stressful!!!
I failed 50 years ago. Grew up on a council estate, almost all from the estate failed, whereas almost all from the posh private houses passed. The difference was out of school coaching on how to pass the test. Thankfully we had a very good Comprehensive school to go to.
I haven't laughed so much for ages! Thank you Evan for so much amusement. Teachers are evil - I loved that. Clearly they are stars, but it made me laugh!
Hmm. It has changed a lot since I did the 11+ more than 40 years ago. The weighting now seems decidedly towards the question on English. I had 3 papers, one for each of the strands and they were all equally weighted. Is the absence of much maths (where was the algebra, the geometry, the fractions?) , to deter those for whom English is a second language? And possibly to make sure those students undergo a lot of private tuition to get up to speed with the language. Just saying....
most kids are actually 10 when they do the 11+ cause it's taken in year 6 and usually in sept-nov which makes it even worse
I took mine in 1966. The exam was held in May and I was 11, my birthday being in September so those with bithdays in June-August would have been 10.
I knew someone a little older than I who passed the 10+ exam, was refused permission by his primary school to take his place at the grammar school and then failed the 11+ the following year. He was subsequently successful in the next attempt, the 13+, but the education on offer was not as wide as if he had passed the 11+.
Gee you make me feel sooooo much brighter. I had to do this a 12 years old back in the 60’s. Only primary school ed, no calculators, etc. That time stressor is something else, isn’t it!!
The reason people struggle financially to send their kids to fee paying school is nothhg to do with academic results,thats a bonus. It's to get your son or daughter into a social network. So in ten,twenty or even thirty years time and they need a leg up,a boost in their career,a change of career or employer,inside info on the best deals on booking that Tuscan villa for the sumer etc they know the right people. As for knowing stuff,you will be boss over a division packed with the brighter state educated minions,until they get replaced by AI.
As for that entry test,if you cant afford to just pay,you hire a tutor to groom your kid to spot the right answers.
Well, my parents fucked that one right up then.
As someone who does struggle financially to send their child to a fee paying school, I have to disagree. We don't care about the social network at all, it's about her thriving academically and getting pushed to achieve the best results possible. If our local secondary schools had been good, we'd have sent her to one of them, but unfortunately, neither of them have a good reputation.
@@AlycyaJane sorry but I don't quite believe you. Academic excellence is all very well,but it takes anyone a lot further allied with personal charm which I'm sure your kids have got luckily. Yes,I get your point about the dire local schools,my one is quite good I think,my nephew seemed to do ok there,but it's tough to ask your kid to sacrifice their life to work so hard to rise above the adversity and then his only social contacts are Wayne the drug dealer and Shane down the pub
@@janebaker966 Actually, my daughter is mildly autistic - she doesn't do social very well at all.
I'm from the era when all of us had to take the 11plus exam. The result decided whether one ended up at a "secondary modern" or "grammar" school. This was before the day of "comprehensive" schools. Secondary modern schools were basically schools where a trade was taught, and most pupils left between 14 to 16 years old.
I went to a grammar school.
I love the editing! Well done!
Both my grandsons, who live in Kent, have passed the 11+ and now go to a fabulous grammar school. As did I and both my children.
I passed my 11+ and actually got one of the highest grades in the entire country that year. Unfortunately the only reason I was applying was the closest grammar school to me had widened their catchment area (area you have to live in to be able to go) that year. But it turned out that some more oocal parents were super upset that their kid hadn't scored high enough to get in (often way worse when an older sibling was already in attendance at the school) so with a month or two before I was due to start they last minute reversed the catchment area expansion & so I couldn't go. And as it was in a different county I was locked into options in that county due to how late into the application process everything was & we knew I'd struggle at state school so I ended up going to a private school instead. They had a scholarship exam to get money towards the fees but I missed out by one mark (beaten by my friend who had also missed out on going to the grammar school due to the catchment area change). Because there was only the one. Later got a discretionary one because I was doing well & they didn't want me to leave when my parent's divorced & my father refused to pay maintenance. But could've saved so much money going to grammar school.
I took the exam before people started using tutors , and it was just another exam we all took at the end of the year, we had a few practice exams.. and some workbooks to take home. My city had many grammar schools so even if you passed, the schools were graded, and you'd need to choice up to 3 schools. I was lucky and got into the top school and enjoyed it, but I know in recent years those who had been coached to pass the exam did not enjoy their time there.
Most kids who take it in Buckinghamshire are actually 10 because you take it very early in year 6. Tutoring makes a massive difference to whether your kids get in or not (my three all did and one got max marks). State primaries are not allowed to do any preparation apart from a couple of practice tests. You don't have to sit it - a few children are not put forward to take it because their parents don't want them to go through the pressure. A few bright kids get in with just some tutoring from their parents. It's not a fair system (even though mine went). It means most are middle class children, whose parents can afford to buy a house in the catchment area, and afford tutoring. Many children attend private primary school (prep school) and then take the exam and save their parents a fortune on private fees for secondary school. The non-grammar schools around here (attended by those who 'failed' or didn't take the test) are really good schools as well. I was the second year of comprehensive intake when I went to school in the west midlands in the 1970s, and I honestly think it's a better system with children from all walks of live and a range of academic ability mixing together.
We didn't prep our kids. The youngest qualified & goes to a grammar and it's obvious a lot of their classmates are there because they were tutored & not because they're naturally more able. The older 2 are doing just as well in their standard secondary because they're motivated (they didnt want to go to a single sex school either which are our only options). The only big difference I've noticed is the facilities & extra curricular opportunities are better at the grammar.
@@hlc1975that depends on the quality of the non selective schools in the area
Some of them round here don't even offer GCSEs at Higher tier (they only offer foundation tier)
In short they consider anyone who gets to the end of year 11 without being in a YOI to be a success story
I have seen inconsistency and ambiguity even in GCSE exam papers. Working with autistic teenagers means we always spot them and, as a result, many get the answer ‘wrong’. A common one is “What assumption did [name in the question] make?” The autistic student has no idea. They could tell you what assumption [name] would need to make in order to answer the question, but that’s not what was asked.
I know for the tactic for the reading comprehension is to read the questions and look for the answers, but I read really fast so I always read the whole passage. And if I had time, I'd go back and read it again for fun. 🤣
I would leave it to the end. the text was so long and boring and small font.
I would read the whole passage for English, but use the other tactic for foreign languages as I wasn't so good at them.
31:30 but for the summer doesnt work because thats ALL the summer, a fortnight is just 2 weeks
34:49 - I think is should be "Father pAPEred the walls" not pREPred. You meant pREPAred but that doesn't fit. :(
Omg
Wondered if anyone else picked up on this one in the comments! I think marking/editing Evan missed it in the commotion of the previous question (eyeglasses vs sunglasses) 😂 and as for test-taking Evan we can chalk that one up to time pressure
Yes. It did also say the three letter answers had to be words in their own right. I thought Evan had used "rep", forgetting that he needed a second p for "prepped".
I did the 11+ test and i passed, also passed the second stage exam. Hoping to get into Wilson's School, Wallington County Grammar School or Sutton Grammar. I will find out on March 1st 2025 and good luck to anybody who tries it. Even if you don't pass, it will boost your mindset and it will help you a lot in life and in studies! Always take the chance!
Ooh interesting. I went to a Grammar school so naturally I did one of these, but I have no memory of how long it took and the content of the questions. I might have been tripped up by the time as well, but I think i'm better at comprehension than maths. I will say though that I would have marked you wrong in a couple of those instances. Spirit of the question is not really applicable in these sorts of tests. The short time limit also tests your time management, whether or not you can prioritise your time effectively (which I think you did pretty well here). 84% is nothing to scoff at!
When it says 80% is the average pass mark, you got over 80, so you passed. You are likely to be accepted to Grammar School, save the exception or circling rather than underlining, etc. The most important thing to note is that the pass mark will be moved every year, depending on the number of places in the grammar school - that is to say IF they set the same test 2 years in a row (they never would!), the pass mark (i.e. accepted to grammar school) could be different.
Don't forget the kids are 11.
I took the 11+ in 1953 and we had to write an essay and a paper on current affairs as well as the English.comprehension and maths.The tests ran over 3 days. I’m pleased to say I got a place at grammar school .
When I did my Kent test ( what we called it in well Kent) I got a 125 and was 5 away from getting in. I was happy with that score because I was close enough that I felt smart but it made my decision for me because I was on the fence for a grammar and regular actually happy I failed love my school
I passed in Kent but we called it the 11+ 😅
I passed Westfield and Kent yet never went to any of them.
1973 - the teacher just handed the papers out without ever saying what they were for or why in our normal classroom - seemed lke a normal test but with a printed paper. It was only years later I realised what it was. Passed, but hated grammar school. Life was just school/homework/sleep/school/homework/sleep etc and homework all day on Sunday. Evil dump where the only regret was being away when the school was demolished and never witnessed it being pulled down.
Yeh the 11+ is not designed to be finished! 😂
Its not an exam paper, its an intelligence test. Always was.
Yes I took it back in 1970 and the one thing I do remember being told is to time manage and to do that which I could do quickly first then return to the more difficult questions. I my teacher also told us that it was important to answer all questions where possible. Oh and to show our workings out.😂
@@Sofasurfa so just do everything!
Evan would make an ideal participant in usability research. He’s great at narrating his thought-process innreal time.
I love these kinds of videos, I remember you doing the GCSE Maths paper, coincidently in the same time period I was doing my own GCSEs
I passed my 11+ with no tutoring and got a place at St Martin in the Fields Grammar School. My twin sister failed and got a place because we were twins. Her life there was miserable, she failed every exam. It was horrible. If kids don't pass the 11+ with no tutoring there are better schools for them than Grammar school
My sister was made to do this when she was nine. She passed with the highest mark. We emigrated soon after but they said they’d hold open her scholarship for five years. Gifted. I missed out as I was too young at the time we emigrated.
What country did you move to?
That doesn’t sound like the 11 plus as such. More an exam to get a scholarship for an assisted place at a fee paying Grammar School.
Regarding your usage of the word far, I know Americans tend to reply to the question 'how far is ...?' Americans tend to reply with a time, while brits would usually reply with distance, both usually estimated.
i literally guessed the last section of my verbal reasoning test as they said "one minute left!", and i got into my grammar school somehow 😂
I've never seen an 11+ paper with a Comprehension passage quite that long. It was a monster. For me, the best tactic would be to leave it 'til last. Another tactic for Comprehension is to read the questions first underlining or otherwise highlighting summary/key words, then read the text, and finally return to the questions.
I did my 11+. I still don’t know why I had to learn verbal reasoning. Never used it outside of that one exam.
Verbal reasoning is something we do subconsciously all the time during everyday sociallising and, well, life in general!
Its not something you learn for an exam... you learned it as a child when you learned to communicate. What is being done here is a test to find out how good you are at it.
"never used it outside of that one exam"... yes you have, all the time, and its not an exam, its a test.
@@fredbear3915 Do I care? No I do not. 🤓
when you said 17:27 4 to the third is is called cubed in the UK