Monkeys and Parrots.

I started this blog thinking I'd have interesting things to say about education --after all I've been a teacher, a head and a writer on education for many years. I actually posted a couple of things. Then I thought, "Hang on. There are too many education bloggers already. Do something different."
So I took down my educational ramblings. Instead, what I'm going to do is post here, as time goes on, is some excerpts from a book I've been trying to put together about what it was like to be a teenager in the Fifties -- about school, and National Service, and my first job. The whole thing runs to about 45,000 words, and it's called "Monkeys and Parrots", for reasons that are explained in it somewhere. But I'm not going to post the whole lot at once. Let's settle for 500 words at time. Here's a bit about when I passed my eleven plus.

"You have qualified".
My year group started at grammar school in 1948. I was the only one from my junior school to go there that year, the only one to pass the eleven-plus.
I remember taking the eleven-plus. I don’t think we called it that. To us it was always t’ Scholarship. If you were bright, or lucky, or both you could “Pass t’ Scholarship.” Presumably because there was a time, not long before, when that’s exactly what it was – a financial award to help poorer kinds into a fee-paying school. The school we were trying for wasn’t fee paying, though. It was a straightforward West Riding Grammar School, well down the pecking order of selective schools.
We didn’t take t’ Scholarship exam in our own quite small church primary. We had to travel to a much bigger junior school in the next village, where we had a rotten school dinner (I remember awful mince) and sat in rows, in silence, in a strange place, doing a full-blown exam. No wonder so many fell by the wayside.
Then we waited for the Word. Pass or Fail. Your whole future on the turn of an arithmetic problem (“A train leaves Crewe at nine-thirty am. It takes two and a half hours……”) My letter was late arriving, which makes me think I was perhaps on some sort of reserve list. I knew I hadn’t done well at maths, but I was certain I’d done an excellent English paper, and I’d probably been OK on the intelligence test, so maybe that tipped the balance. None of my classmates got the call. In some cases it was a surprise. The headmaster’s brother, for example (yes, he had an eleven-year old brother) who sat by me in class, didn’t pass, although he later made up for it with technical qualifications and did very well. Another star pupil, a girl, failed but went to a fee paying Catholic girls’ school instead.
I still have the letter. It’s very ordinary looking, and is called “Form S (E) 24”. The heading is “County Council of the West Riding of Yorkshire Education Department”. Then there’s my name, written in, and another heading, “County Examination for Selection for Secondary Schools, 1948.’
Then it tells me (not my parents, but me – a nice touch, that) “You have qualified for admission to Ecclesfield Grammar School.” (The school’s name is handwritten) and continues with the instruction to report there on 6 September next, and that I can get a travelling allowance. In fact I got a nice bus pass, with a red cardboard cover.
I was just elated. It wasn’t so much anticipation of the delights of the grammar school as sheer relief at not going to the grim, school-of-hard-knocks sec mod that catered for the sons and daughters of all the local miners. That was where the kids had been known to put a teacher upside down in a dustbin. Or so they said. I didn’t want any part of that. Oh dear, no.
So my mother took me to Cole’s in Sheffield to get my uniform – blazer, flannel trousers, beret.......
OK. That's enough rambling. If you like it I'll post a a bit more soon

Meanwhile, Ric, commenting on the above, suggests that I might bring in some contemporary references where appropriate. That seems a good idea, so I'll try to do that.
What this first excerpt does, I suppose, is help to show just how useless the eleven plus was (and sadly still is, because it does cling on a bit here and there) at predicting future success. My guess is that it's really no better than sticking a pin into a list of children's names. Worst of all, though,
as Bob Harrison's comment below suggests, was its effect on children and families. I could go on about this, but I really can't add anything to what was already a well worn debate when I first came across it forty or more years ago.