We don’t need no education
Eleven-Plus and the art of making sausages — reflections on endemic inequalities.
Being a product of the cut-throat education systems in India and Singapore, I am well versed in the intricacies of sausage-making factories. I was therefore quite unfazed when my elder daughter, now eleven, embarked on the grilling 11+ preparation regime some eighteen months ago. ‘She’ll be fine!’ we were reassured by well-wishers, friends, and acquaintances, alike. ‘After all, you’ve been there, done that!’, they quipped.
With a decision on her foreseeable educational future now made, I look back and my reflections of the experience are bittersweet.
These reflections do not come from a place of ill-will or sour grapes. We are fortunate and blessed to be in a position where all options were financially within reach. A private school education in Britain can put one back by a pretty sum over seven years. Double that for two kids. Our elder daughter is smart, disciplined, and dedicated and put herself through the rigorous preparation required to attain scores that comfortably secured positions in some of the best super-selective grammar and independent schools in the South-East, if not the entire country. In many cases, she was granted an academic scholarship.
We played the game and came through. The game though is unfair and unbalanced. It highlighted to us some of the fault lines and self-perpetuating inequalities that are endemic in British society.
Readers from overseas might not be familiar with the nuances of the English secondary school entrance process. Likewise, for readers without children. I belonged to both these groups in the not too distant past. For their benefit, a brief primer: 11+ entrance exams are sat by some students at the start of Year 6 seeking admission into secondary grammar and independent schools. The default position for all pupils in the country is their local comprehensive school, which factors in preference and a place is determined primarily by proximity of the child’s residence to the school (‘the catchment area’). Grammar schools are meant for students who would like to pursue a more academically rigorous curriculum; entry to these schools is selective and is based on clearing entrance exams. Comprehensive and grammar schools in England are funded by the central government. Independent fee-paying schools run their own entrance exams, in addition to requiring prospective students and sometimes, their parents, to participate in interviews and other group activities.
We were already familiar with the economic implications of good school catchment areas on house prices. We happened to live in a neighbourhood with an impressive clutch of primary schools. We hadn’t given serious consideration to schools when our daughters were toddlers and were fortunate to find ourselves in a good school district. We found prospective parents buying and renting houses in our neighbourhood so that they could be within the five-to-seven-hundred-meter radius from the front gate of the school of their choice (as the crow flies) to secure admission. This disproportionately inflates property prices and rents in these areas: the first barrier to families who cannot afford these prices or simply happen to be in an indifferent neighbourhood.
We found the stakes rise as we approached Year 5. Good local comprehensive schools in our neighbourhood continue to be in high demand. We are also fortunate to have a selection of good grammar schools within a ten-mile radius. Grammar schools are academically oriented and selective — in some of the outer boroughs of London, like the one we live in, the schools are substantially oversubscribed and therefore highly selective. Candidates need to sit entrance exams and the top performers are awarded a place. In theory, this process sounds reasonable. However, as demand for these schools is significantly higher than supply, competition is very stiff. This skews the system. From an early age, most commonly in Year 4 but in many cases even before then, pushy parents (us included, its par for the course!) enrol their children in tuition classes. These could be group, individual or both. As the test material targets academically oriented children at age eleven, the span of the curriculum is what a child will be expected to know in depth in the first two terms of Year 6. The exams cover Maths, English, Verbal Reasoning (VR) and Non-Verbal Reasoning (NVR) and test students on knowledge, accuracy, and speed. At various stages during my daughter’s preparation, I tried my hand at some of the questions — I got the answers eventually but failed miserably on time. It dawned on me early on that success in these tests required consistent application and rigorous practice.
Children, aged just eight or nine, slog over months to get exam ready. Committed and dedicated parents and tutors support them in their effort. Tuition classes can be expensive. Books, practice exercises and mock tests are not cheap. Parents who are keen on a grammar school education for their children, especially for the super-selective options in London, have little choice but to embark upon this journey and do so in the hope that this upfront financial investment is necessary to secure their child’s immediate educational future. We bit the bullet and did the same. But even whilst succumbing to the mentality of the herd, we recognised the imperfections of this system. Given the hyper-competitive nature of the entrance exam, a highly rigorous preparation regime over twelve to eighteen months seemed almost mandatory. There were many occasions when we felt sorry for our daughter as she pushed and pulled herself through it. There were times in this journey when we questioned whether the effort was worth it — whether this was for us. We persisted and stayed the course. Only just. We came to the realisation that being bright and intelligent is not the most important pre-requisite to entering a super-selective grammar school. Being pushy as parents and extremely resilient and determined as a child is.
And then there is the question of money. What about, we asked ourselves, those parents who do want an academic education for their children but lack the financial means or the sustained motivation to tutor their children. Given the competition and the skewed nature of the approach to 11+ preparation, they don’t stand a chance.
When my daughter received her score and found that it had comfortably placed her well above the threshold required for the school of her choice, we — she, our younger daughter, my wife, and I — we — jumped for joy and screamed and shouted. It was a team effort and the culmination of months of effort. Sweat and tears for sure, sans blood!
‘The British public school system is such a unique thing’, remarked a colleague to me many years ago with a flamboyant flourish. ‘Do they churn out smarter kids? Probably not. Do they have better facilities? Definitely. You are paying dearly for it. But above all, they leave you with something special. Influence. Confidence. Network. Intangible.’ It almost sounded like an advertisement for Mastercard. Priceless.
It is true that historically students educated in the independent sector have dominated Oxbridge entry and are disproportionately represented in plum government, finance, and professional service jobs. So, we decided to give our daughter the option and applied to a selection of independent fee-paying schools in the area. The schools we considered were without exception highly regarded, well placed in the league tables and in some cases, with a historical and academic legacy going back centuries. As it turned out, she received offers from all of them; in many cases, on a partially funded academic scholarship.
At the start of Year 4, we had a rough idea of the independent schools we were gunning for. In Year 5, when we visited the schools during the Open Days, the stark nature of the choices we had in front of us became evident.
Independent fee-paying schools are expensive. My wife and I fall within the ‘aspiring middle class’ category. My wife, who decided to become a full-time mother when we had children, re-entered the work force a couple of years ago with one eye on private school affordability. Two incomes were a necessary pre-requisite to underwrite any ambition we might have had to send both our children to private school. I will doff the proverbial hat at any family who can afford to send their children to private school without wincing or at the very least acknowledging the dear nature of the financial outlay. It is an investment in your children’s future, is a phrase we heard often. A few weeks ago, I was out on my daily 20-minute constitutional lockdown walk around the block and bumped into a neighbour. She has two daughters — one goes to a grammar school and the other to an independent one. I asked her about her experience. She listed the pros and cons of both options. ‘Of course, with private schools, you get what you pay for!’ she remarked wryly.
You most certainly do. There is no comparison. During our visits to the independent schools, we were simultaneously awestruck and uneasy with the massive disparity in the quality of the facilities between the independent schools and their government sponsored counterparts. The vast campuses, the well-equipped science and computer labs, the sports fields, well stocked libraries, and abundance of choice in subjects and extra-curricular activities available in the private schools was staggering. As an erstwhile governor at my daughters’ primary school, I am intimately familiar with the financial pressures faced by state schools. When we heard last week that the much loved and talented music teacher at their school was the latest staff member who had decided to resign to take up a job in the independent sector, it was disappointing, but not surprising. The differences between the two sectors are well known — but up close and personal, it was painfully obvious to us that state schools were the distant and destitute relatives. You get what you pay for.
We learnt that the process to gain admission into the independent schools included not just examinations, but also assessments of the all-round potential of the child. Interviews, group discussions, and references from the applicant’s primary school were some of the elements of the overall admissions process. The broad base of their assessment framework is also accompanied by a degree of opacity. Unlike the grammar school system where the score secured is binary and beyond doubt, there is a fair amount of subjectivity in the independent sector with little recourse to an appeals process.
Most of the schools we visited also highlighted the role they were playing in the ‘levelling-up’ agenda. How they didn’t want to be seen as elitist, the investments they were making in the community and the increased number of ‘needs-based’ bursaries awarded to deserving candidates. Sitting there in the audience consuming this information, I wondered if I was the only one thinking: ‘The reason we are considering a private school education is precisely because they are elite. And why should the fees I am scrounging to pay be used to subsidise others. I’m doing that already with my taxes — thank you very much!!’ Fair to say, I wasn’t convinced by the argument. Ho-hum.
In the months since we did our Open Day visits, I could see my wife struggle with her own internal dilemma. Many a kitchen table conversation was about the inherent inequality in this choice. ‘Who wouldn’t want the best for their children?’, she asked me emotionally a few weeks ago. She is Italian and perhaps more egalitarian in her worldview than I am. ‘Every child should be given the right to the same level of high-quality education. Affordability, parental drive, geography, none of them should play a part.’
And she is right. The vast majority of parents cannot afford a private school education for their children. Many make sacrifices and tough choices when they do decide to opt for an independent school. Likewise, parents and children inclined towards an academic education might not have the financial latitude, motivation or resilience required for grammar school 11+ preparation. Every parent wants the utmost for their children. A system that fundamentally requires them to settle is unfair.
Am I being naïve? Probably. I’m sure there is an argument to be made about the freedom of choice and free markets.
In the case of my daughter, despite having many choices, the final decision wasn’t easy. It was emotional. Did we get it right? We cannot say for sure. Time will tell.
The whole experience left us with an ambiguous and hollow feeling. Even while we played the game, it reminded us of the inequalities pervasive in our society. If we aspire to greater equality, we need to start with our children. There is a case to be made for a system that gives them the same high-quality options, fair and square, without prejudice. Hard-wiring these choices for them at the tender age of eleven seems unfair and wrong. We can do better than this. We owe it to them.
