Yesterday, thousands of primary seven pupils in Northern Ireland sat their 11-plus. Thousands of primary six pupils breathed a sigh of relief that next year they wouldn't have to.
Yesterday, thousands of primary seven pupils in Northern Ireland sat their 11-plus. Thousands of primary six pupils breathed a sigh of relief that next year they wouldn't have to.
The 11-plus exam has finally been abolished in Northern Ireland, some 40 years after it disappeared in the rest of the UK. Before the final sitting yesterday, the exam had been a divisive issue for the community, with concern focusing on what will replace it.
Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, former head of the civil service in Northern Ireland and head of the Association of Quality Education group of 30 grammar schools, said yesterday that there had always been problems with the exam. "There are many features of the 11-plus which we find unsatisfactory - for instance the very definitive system of grading, A, B1, B2 - and so on. People think that for instance between an A and a B there is some enormous gulf. In fact, there is hardly any gulf at all; relatively few marks can separate these people."
And that was always the drawback of the 11-plus: its brutal partitioning of fate.
A point or two either side of the pass mark and your life could be radically different.
The selection of pupils in this way began in the wake of the 1944 Education Act. Every child took the exam in the final year of primary school; one of the perceived advantages was that bright pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds could be given the chance to succeed.
In Scotland, those who sat the 11-plus had two potential fates: the senior secondary, which offered a chance to sit Highers and go on to university, or the junior secondary, which led to life in a trade or an unskilled job. At just 11 years old, your future could be sealed with no hope of a retrial.
The exam was officially abolished across the UK in 1965 with the introduction of comprehensive education. It was an attempt to even out the chances of pupils across the country. However, Northern Ireland chose to retain the system. In England, the comprehensive model was adopted but some grammar schools elected to become private schools, and some remained as grammars. Indeed, some local authorities in England kept grammar schools and the 11-plus, usually in middle-class areas, citing parental pressure.
In Scotland, the dreaded exam disappeared for ever, meaning children would no longer have to sit a compulsory exam to determine which school they would attend. Private schools, of course, set entrance exams for pupils around the same age.
Politically, the 11-plus has always been an issue likely to burst into flames at any moment. John Prescott was famously offered a new bike if he passed his. He didn't - and, after attending a secondary modern in England, went to work as a trainee chef and then a passenger-ship steward. The Tories have always supported grammar schools and the principles upon which they are built, but even for David Cameron, the 11-plus has a negative power. Recently he said the key to success in education was high standards and firm discipline for all, rather than a return to the 11-plus.
In Northern Ireland, the future is uncertain. Some grammar schools have insisted they will go it alone and stage their own entrance exams next year in place of the 11-plus. There has also been some talk of an alternative: the 14-plus. The only problem would be how it could work given that pupils had already moved from primary to secondary school. Would they have to move to a new school or simply move to another stream within their own school? Sir Kenneth Bloomfield said: "One of the problems of that is it would mean a reorganisation of the whole school system."
