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Grammar School Selection – some absurd recent history

by Ian Shires on 16 August, 2016

Published on Liberal Democrat Voice By | Mon 15th August 2016 – 1:40 pm

Theresa May’s party activist pleasing aim to create more grammar schools generated a lot of debate last week.

I thought I would share the absurdity of the Kent Test, which I sat to go to grammar school in 1991.  It is fair to say that Conservative-run Kent administered selection in a very odd way at that time.

In those days:

Your test could be given someone else’s mark

a) You took, at the start of Year 6, three tests.  But the marks you were given was usually not your own.  This was not an administration error but was intentional policy.

Primary Schools had to rank pupils in order of ability before the test.  This ranking was kept secret.  It was pre-FoI, pre-DPA and pupils and parents were never allowed to know where they were ranked or why. You then took the test.  The best mark scored by anyone in the school was assigned to the person the school had ranked top.  The second best mark to the next person and so on, even if the student had actually scored a different mark in the test.

This effectively created selection according to someone’s ability but not necessarily your own ability.  Undoubtedly some pushy, influential, self-important parents, lobbied their child’s headteacher to go up the unaccountable ranking.

We took an English test that did not count

b) The tests (written exams) were in English, Maths and Critical Reasoning but in my year the English marks were not counted.  Part of the English test involved an unseen extract from a story which you had to analyse and write a continuation.  The story chosen for my year was about a polar bear who considered the most beautiful animal by all the others because she was pristinely white.  Some people took the view that to equate whiteness with beauty was racist and this made the test unfair as it might have upset some pupils and affected their performance.

I have doubts about this reasoning.  Anyone can see that to say white human skin being inherently more beautiful than other colours of skin is wrong.  But it is a different thing to say that a polar bear’s white fur is pleasing to look at.  In any event, that is just the opinion of the writer.  Children should be exposed at any early age, and definitely by year 6, to the idea that a writer (or any other communicator) can express an opinion, which may or may not be right.  Which you may or may not agree with.  Which might give you an emotional reaction or event upset you.  Good art makes you feel something.  I expect some of the children wrote a continuation of the story where another animal was even more beautiful.  I expect some wrote a continuation where the animals learned that that your inner qualities matter more than the way you look.

It says a lot that the County was so negligent to set a test that it would later decide it was unsuitable.

It says even more about Selection that the English test could be set aside and the system still presented as having integrity.  If the English test was not integral, why was it required in the first place? The whole thing was a farce.

You could appeal, and they would test your parents

c) If you were not offered a grammar school place after the test you could appeal up to 3 times.  The appeal was by your parents being interviewed.  You crossed your fingers that your parents did okay.  The main questions was “how are you going to support your child if they are at grammar school and find it hard?”  By this stage it could not be clearer that it was as much about social selection as academic selection.

The system was so absurd it would be amusing if people’s life chance were not affected by it.

Today, selection in Kent remains flawed and often socially discriminatory, as Kent County Council recently admitted, but in different ways.  There is more need than ever for reform.

A real issue in Kent is the decision over many, many decades by the County Council to give schools less investment than other counties.  Conservative councillors in Kent have frequently been people who take funds away from our schools while buying places and privilege for their own children at private schools.

I don’t mind people sending their children to private schools, but don’t do it if you are going to cut funds from the schools that 93% of us go to and will send our children to.

 

* Antony Hook was #2 on the South East European list in 2014, is the English Party’s representative on the Federal Executive and produces this sites EU Referendum Roundup.

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