Training for the 11-plus may be making your child less intelligent, experts warn
Tutoring, mentoring and training young children to help them pass controversial 11-plus tests to get into selective schools could make children less intelligent and testing should be scrapped, experts have suggested.
For many parents, having to pay for private lessons to pass the exam feels like a dire requirement to ensure their child has access to the best education possible.
But experts warn that the rise of verbal and non-verbal reasoning papers, originally intended to weed out the most academically talented children, has given rise to a vast tutoring industry that risks turning students into “exam robots” rather than nurturing intelligence.
Unlike the other two core components of the exam (math and English), reasoning skills that focus on problem solving through words or diagrams are not commonly taught in state elementary schools.
This gap causes parents to scramble to get private lessons, often at great expense, to prepare their children for questions they would not normally encounter in school.
Hours of poring over past paperwork have become routine and, for many families, the over-11s are seen as a pointless ordeal useful only in securing a coveted school place rather than a learning opportunity.
The result, critics say, is a system that rewards coaching over curiosity, money over intellectual curiosity, and entrenches socioeconomic inequality and class divisions through the costs of private lessons.
There is now a growing backlash against the testing, with many working in the area saying it should either be scrapped or at least reformed.
Will Orr-Ewing, founder and director of Keystone Tutors, one of the nation’s leading private tutoring companies, said: Independent that the verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning elements of the exam “should be set aside.”
“They are too easy to play around with,” he said, adding that the way children should be taught to get through 11+ has become “educationally counterproductive” and “produces exam robots with no real love of learning.”
He added: “Their main problem is that they turn to preparations that have no lasting educational value.
“It would be much more preferable if kids spent more than 50 hours a year on math, reading, history, etc.”
The 11+’s cultural impact on the country and its enduring role in the education system has long been viewed as damaging by critics and those whose lives are shaped by passing or failing the test.
website 11plusanonymous.org It publishes often harrowing, poignant and frustrating accounts of people passing optional exams before entering secondary school.
Writing about the impact of failing the exam on their lives, one person wrote: “I am now 79 and still awaiting with confidence the final abolition of 11+. For me, failing to pass the 11+ destroyed the concept of family forever: my siblings went to the local primary school but I languished in the modern secondary school. When I failed the 11+ I felt drained.”
Another statement by a “heartbroken” parent of a boy who failed the 2024 exam said the “enormous pressure” on his son had caused some of his hair to turn grey.
Kane Taylor, founder of Taylor Tuition, which brings students together with expert teachers, said: Independent the trial documents “occupy an interesting position” [they are] “One of the few assessments in British education that ostensibly attempts to detect students’ underlying intellectual capacities as opposed to their capacity to retain information.”
But he added: “But as with any measure, once it becomes a target it ceases to be a good target.”
A number of grammar schools across the country are changing the way they assess children applying for places.
Reading School, a grammar school in Berkshire, has created a new style of admissions process where the subjects tested can change from year to year, from geography to history. Maths and English are also tested only in subjects taught in the national curriculum. Times reports.
Mr Taylor added: “Generally speaking, there is consensus around the goal of producing independent, self-reliant thinkers through the educational process, and there are certainly questions to be asked about whether 11+ in its current form can achieve this.”
