SATs Tests - Controversy

[Anonymouse]

I took the 11+ and passed...although I don't think I would have, nervous as I was, if our primary school teachers hadn't pulled off the most brilliant, compassionate con on us. To explain:

We were given several tests - I think they were the Montem Intelligence Tests, or something like that - fairly regularly during the run-up to the 11+. These, we were told, were similar to the final 11+, for "practice". Okay, we thought. After a while we were apparently done with practice exams and I spent a few weeks worrying about the 11+, as was my wont (even though I knew I was clever and didn't really have anything to worry about - nor did I stop worrying even at grammar school!).

What we weren't told was that the last of these "practice" exams was the 11+. So I was very startled to receive a letter saying I'd been accepted at Deane Grammar School. "When did that happen?!" I thought, but my Mum - who, like the rest of the parents, was in on the con - explained what they'd done, i.e. not told us it was the real test so we wouldn't worry and could therefore do our best. I thought it was a sneaky trick to pull, but it worked, so I could hardly complain.

Years later, though, I could well sympathise with Andrew "Ender" Wiggin and the con he was subjected to! I could also relate to Harry Potter and Hogwarts!

But I'm not sure there's any need for formal tests in primary school - far better, I think, for the teachers to just look at the general pattern of the childrens' work during the year. We learned the times tables by rote, and were generally called on individually to recite a given table, e.g. 12 - I don't recall ever getting it wrong.

On the other hand...I now realise that, contrary to the way teachers are forced to teach now, some pupils were singled out and given more challenging work, in small groups. Reading, for example, required members of these groups to master the use and spelling of multisyllabic words. In other words, they were encouraging the brighter kids. (My Mum told me, years later, that the teachers who taught these groups loved hearing me read, managing even words like 'chrysanthemum' with no trouble at all - and they told Mum when I was still only 4 years old that they were sure I'd have no problem with the 11+)

I don't think they're allowed to do that now, because "everyone's special". But as Dash Parr pointed out in The Incredibles, if everyone's 'special', then no-one is. They don't seem to be allowed to acknowledge the fact - and it IS a fact - that some kids are brighter than others and need extra tuition, to challenge them and prevent them from getting bored. Nothing causes more trouble than a bored bright kid.

Also, I was in a nursery school before going to primary, and I think it helped. Of greater help, mind you, were my sisters and Mum who encouraged me to read. I did. Voraciously. But my book collecting only started when, at a bring & buy sale, I discovered the Doctor Who novelisations, and that was it - I couldn't get enough books. I now have over 1200, having started with Doctor Who And The Giant Robot in 1975, and after several years I finally completed the DW collection with Survival.

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In fact, the DW collection was the genesis of my former life's ambition, which was to become a nuclear physicist - I knew the correct phrase even though it doesn't appear in Doctor Who And The Cave-Monsters (the novelisation of The Silurians). Something about the profession appealed greatly to my inquiring mind, and for years my Plan worked perfectly: pass the 11+ (I did); get into a good grammar school (I did); pass my 'O' Levels with high grades (I did - A in English, Physics and Chemistry)...and then it all fell apart at 6th Form college. I'm still trying to forget the 2 years I suffered through at South Bolton 6th Form College. No lab equipment for the first year. None. Not so much as a test tube. My morale and motivation were utterly destroyed - and Windscale (I still refuse to call it 'Sellafield' or whatever), Three Mile Island and the Karen Silkwood case had all occurred in the meantime and thoroughly put me off the idea in any case. I changed tracks to IT, but that's a whole other story.
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Get your kids to read. Read with them. Make sure they have at least one encyclopedia, as my sisters did for me. There's no substitute for reading at home.