I read Chris Horrie’s Long read (Back to the bad old days, 4 May) with a cold, hard fury. I too failed the 11-plus. I was 13th in a class of 44 and I just missed the cut at 12 children above me. Although I was then “top boy” I had a sense of only being the best of a bad bunch. I served an apprenticeship as a marine engineer at my local shipyard in Ardrossan and studied at night school for ONC/HNC qualifications. In my first year I passed out third in a class of 88 boys, many of whom had passed their 11-plus. In a blinding flash I realised I was not stupid – just like Mr Horrie discovered.
I started my own engineering company with £10 capital in April 1966. We flourished and at our peak we employed over 400 personal – all on good salaries and 32 days’ holidays per annum. No gig economy in our company. I was made an MBE by the Queen on 31 December for services to the engineering industry. Theresa May is a disgrace for her bizarre promotion of the discredited selective grammar school system. Ninety per cent of UK children are educated in the state comprehensive system. Their parents and former pupils of the comprehensive schools must provide a bedrock of voters for any party but the Tories.
WR McCrindle
Chairman, McCrindle Group Ltd, West Kilbride, Ayrshire
• I could never vote for Theresa May with her divisive bring back grammar schools policy. Chris Horrie illustrates well the disadvantages, social and intellectual, suffered by those who failed the 11-plus and were subjected to a limited curriculum during their secondary years. Mrs May exposes her unfair leanings in her decision that dividing the nation’s children at 11 is what the country needs. If this is what she wants for the young, one wonders about her intentions for working adults. The “them and us” culture will return with a vengeance if the conservatives are voted in.
We should aim to improve our education system by offering a wide choice of subjects in the curriculum from which learners can choose to follow. Thankfully some determined 11-plus failures, like Chris Horrie and me, were able to pursue academic interests, but many were too disheartened. Beware of May’s divisive policies.
Sandra Dowe
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
• In 1957, together with most of my friends, I failed the 11-plus exam. From that moment we were made to feel like second-class citizens fit only for second-class jobs. Thanks largely to a dedicated headmaster and inspiring biology teacher, I managed a few O-level passes and a grammar school was forced by the local education authority to take four of us for A-levels. Our presence was clearly resented by the headteacher who publicly announced that we were likely to spoil his proud exam record. Fifty-three years later, I retired from my job as a senior hospital consultant physician.
Most of my friends were not so lucky. While many were clearly academically bright, they were so disheartened by societey’s judgment of them, that they lost any remaining self-esteem and most of their ambition. Chris Horrie is right to say that those who so enthusiastically exhort the reintroduction of grammar schools have no idea of the lifelong effect such a divisive system can have on the two-thirds of the population that are labelled as failures.
Dr Richard Banks
Churchdown, Gloucestershire
• “Who will speak out for them?” asks Chris Horrie, of the many “crushed by the experience of failing the 11-plus exam”. I made an attempt in my Educating the Educators (2003). Like Horrie, I ended up with little in the way of formal education after failing the 11-plus, which meant that I had more or less to educate myself, based on whatever reading grabbed my attention. At every step of the way to higher education, I was made to feel cheap and common, denigrated for my squat working-class body, my accent, spelling, table manners, in short, for my whole culture.
Unlike Horrie, I didn’t “have a ball” at university, when eventually I arrived there. The atmosphere– was totally alien to me. Most of the students moved through the world as if they owned it, which, to all intents and purposes, some of them, or at least their fathers, did. One side-effect of their proprietorial ease was a fundamentally unquestioning attitude towards the world. The university was an extension of their social round, with all the privileges that this entailed, and which they had every reason to accept as it was.
In contrast, I was compelled by sheer force of circumstance, including the constant possibility of betrayal by my class instincts, to operate both in and upon the world. This was to prove a very good basis for more creative work in higher education. For those interested in further detail, I refer them to Educating the Educators. Also of interest is Jake Ryan’s and Charles Sachrey’s Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class (1984).
Professor Malcolm Read
Belper, Derbyshire
• As a baby-boomer born in 1947, I can remember all too well the ignominy which went with failing the 11-plus and being allocated to a secondary modern. At infant and junior schools we had classes of 45-50 pupils. In secondary modern school the classes were only slightly smaller. Due to the enormous birthrate of 1947, when the time came for us to sit the 11-plus many passed but were unable to take up places at the local grammar schools as there were no places left. As a result, in my class at the secondary modern, around half the class had actually passed the 11-plus, while the rest had done well, but had not reached the pass mark.
The divisiveness of this system was palpable and far from allowing students to advance on an equitable basis, it further undermined many individuals’ aspirations. The main aim of the 11-plus is to separate out those deemed unacademic. But research over many years has shown that this just does not work and many children are left feeling utter failures, with their life chances consequently limited. The grammar school system should be consigned to the dustbin of history, and the improvement of non-selective schools should be of the utmost importance in providing all children with the best possible education in which to achieve their dreams and aspirations. Selective education divides society and creates inequality, injustice and unfairness.
Jacqueline Angell
Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire
• Your article on “lunch shaming” (Austerity has no place in the battle against child poverty, 3 May) took me back 50 years to 1967. My brother and I both passed our 11-plus and went to grammar school in Trafford. We were the only children to receive free school meals as my divorced mum’s income as a legal secretary was so low. I had to “work” for my free dinner by getting to school early enough to go round each classroom to collect the dinner numbers. My brother was made to stand in a separate queue – on his own. We were continually told we were “lucky” to be fed by the local authority.
Between us we have five degrees, all funded by the state, and have worked full-time for 75 years, entirely in the public and charitable sectors (social work, housing and teaching). The Tory’s proposals for more grammar schools together with their cruel and heartbreaking austerity will take us back to segregation, inequality and affect the working poor the most. Time to speak up and avoid the stigma of the past.
Jackie King-Owen
Matlock, Derbyshire
• We seem to have forgotten the lessons of history. A small question – which local education authority first overturned grammar schools and instigated a system of comprehensive education? Some “loony left” inner-city council? No, it was true-blue Leicestershire. The first local scheme to overturn the 1944 Education Act was the Leicestershire Plan, originated by Stewart Mason as early as 1957. He wrote some years later: “The Leicestershire Plan offers a ‘comprehensive’ pattern of education. Every year that has gone by since 1957 reinforces my view that the swing of public opinion towards ‘comprehensiveness’ is gathering momentum.”
Why were grammar schools abolished in such an area, so early? The answer comes in Chris Horrie’s article. There were a limited number of grammar school places, so many able children were being denied access to a grammar school education merely because they fell below the 25th percentile, rather than above it. It was a cruel and unjust system and parents could both see that and had to deal with the consequences. Furthermore, primary education was being distorted to train pupils to pass the test, not to educate them in the broadest sense. So take heed, Mrs May.
Paul Bowyer
Birstall, Leicestershire
• A working-class boy, the 11-plus worked for me. I went to a grammar, gained a place at Oxford and became an academic. In my own junior school I was certainly in a minority. I remember vividly the moment when the head announced those privileged names. I can still say exactly where I was in the classroom, what the weather was, how the head and the class teacher were dressed. But most vividly, I remember the faces of disappointment and, worse, what I recall as the looks of resignation of the unsuccessful who were then subjected to the sort of education he describes. Social mobility for some, but social dejection for others. That image has stayed with me since that time and contributed to me becoming, in my maturity, a resolute and life-long opponent of selective education.
Henry Phillips
Stockport
• I read in Chris Horrie’s article that a former headmaster of Manchester grammar school explained that “no child who had not seen the verbal reasoning tests that formed the basis of the 11-plus before attempting them would have a ‘hope in hell’ of passing them.” When I was in class 4b of my junior school in 1959 I heard that class 4a were having special lessons. I later discovered they were mock 11-plus exams. Unsurprisingly, all bar one in 4a passed and the remainder of the fourth year failed. Considering that we were streamed at age seven, with very little movement following, it is clear that winners were chosen at infant school. Is this what Theresa May wishes to return to?
Ted Watson
Brighton
• Chris Horrie must not think he was alone. Thanks to my mother, a single parent immigrant who drove herself into penury to pay for coaching, I passed the 11-plus. In my grammar school the only people who were celebrated were those, perhaps eight to 12 a year, who were hothoused to go to Oxbridge. Despite being in top sets for nearly everything I felt a failure as soon as it became clear I was not Oxbridge material. Grammar schools succeed by making the vast majority fail.
Peter Gacsall
Haywards Heath, Sussex
• In 1954 I was 11. I came from a working-class background in east London and my mother and father were manual workers. I was bullied by a teacher in primary school, so I was moved to a lower class and given no preparation for the 11-plus. As a result, I failed the exam. My older brother had passed and seemed to be given all sorts of privileges, but in fact my granny had to pay for the expensive uniform. If I had passed there would have been no money for my uniform and all the other extras.
At my secondary modern school only two teachers had been properly trained. The remaining teachers were fresh out of the army with six weeks teacher training. Of course the pay was much lower than in a grammar school.
Extraordinarily, we had a superb science lab, but the water and gas were never turned on and we never did any experiments. To this day I am frequently aware of the huge gaps in my science education. Facilities were fewer all round. I studied French at night school from the age of 13 as a French teacher was too expensive. One in eight grammar school pupils in the early 1960s went to university, but it was one in 24,000 secondary modern pupils. I was one of the lucky ones. The experience of failure at 11 has been with me all my life, even though I managed to fight the system and ended up with a PhD.
Roy Tucker
Leeds
• Unlike Chris Horrie, my initial reaction to failure was resignation, this slowly changed to anger as I came to realise I was officially stupid, but brighter than many that passed the 11-plus. As with Horrie my teachers ranged from ineffective to excellent. I got lucky: the maths teacher was the best. He gave me confidence in my mathematical ability that led to a successful career in engineering. My anger subsided, slightly, on the day I could walk into the Institute of Mechanical Engineers headquarters and announced that I was there to chair an interview panel. A great regret of my life is that I did not thank that teacher personally. I can do it publicly: thank you James HB Moffat.
Michael Hudson
Lincoln
• Back to the bad old days brought memories flowing back. In 1955 I failed my 11-plus and was devastated. At 11 I knew nothing of the importance of this exam and what effect it could have on a child’s future. The level of failure among boys in the mining villages of County Durham was so high that a third tier of school was used – the county school. This was below grammar and secondary modern. These schools were for the absolute dunces and life’s failures. I endured (survived, just about) four years at a county school and left at 15 with no recognised qualification. Of the 35 boys in the class, all but three avoided the local coalmine, the local farms or the army. I went to a technical college and did O-Levels. At the end of this I got a job in a quality control laboratory, where I could do day-release studying for ONC and HNC in chemistry – the first time I had ever encountered chemistry was at 17.
The rest is history, but it was a struggle with lots of sacrifices. I now have a first-class honours degree in chemical technology, a Phd in chemistry, I am a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and also have a first in humanities (history and art history) and an MA in history. Not bad for someone that the state perceived to be an abject failure and dunce at 11 years old.
Dr Tony Daniels
Yarm, Teesside
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
