The start of the autumn term is a bittersweet time for headteacher Sue Lewin. Settling new entrants at her Buckinghamshire junior school quickly gives way to five weeks of stress and anxiety for older pupils preparing to move to secondary school.
Choosing a new school can be a fraught process for families everywhere. But in Buckinghamshire, one of 15 fully selective authorities, the pressure starts early. Over the last fortnight pupils have sat preparation papers for the 11-plus, and the real exam. Many will have been coached for months, or years.
In a month their educational fate will be sealed: they will know if they have passed and can apply to one of the county’s 13 grammar schools or must go to one of its 21 secondary moderns.
Even after 10 years as head of Haddenham junior school, Lewin still finds the tension distressing. “The children are beside themselves, sometimes in tears,” she says. “I have parents asking me if I can stop their children talking about it, others who are already lining up lawyers in case their children fail. It is the one time of the year when I actually say to the pupils I would rather they talked about TV, favourite video games, almost anything else but the test.”
But this year was supposed to be different. In 2013 the county’s grammar schools said they were introducing a new test that would be more resistant to coaching, to counter allegations that selection was stressful, unfair and disadvantaging poor children. The promise was of less worry and expense, along with wider access to grammar schools, which currently take far fewer children eligible for free school meals than the proportion in their local areas.
But a detailed analysis of entry patterns, pass rates, ethnicity and family backgrounds of pupils who took the test last year has been shown to the Guardian. It suggests that, if anything, the new test may have made things worse.
Evidence culled by a local campaign group from an exhaustive list of Freedom of Information requests to Buckinghamshire county council and its grammar schools shows that children from local state primaries have been less successful than in previous years.
The gap between the percentage of state and private school pupils passing the so-called “tutor-proof” test has increased by more than three percentage points. About 20% of local state school pupils now pass compared to 70% of private school pupils. According to the data, a child from a Buckinghamshire private school is now more than three and a half times more likely to pass the 11-plus than a child from one of its state primaries.
A sharp rise in non-Bucks children sitting the 11 plus, possibly commuting into the county to practise the test from other areas, appears to have pushed up the pass rates and squeezed out some local applicants.
And according to Rebecca Hickman, an education consultant and former grammar school pupil who helped compile the data, FOI requests to the eight secondary schools in Wycombe, which includes some of the most deprived and diverse wards in the county, suggest that children on free school meals and of Pakistani heritage have been less successful this year. “What we are seeing now is that it is impossible to devise a fair test of ability to divide children at 11 which will not discriminate according to social background, race and prior opportunity,” she says. “Those with superior resources to start with will still come out on top.”
A recent study into achievement in Buckinghamshire by Professor Steve Strand from Oxford University showed that the gap in outcomes between children eligible for free school meals and those who are not is above the national average and higher than in other counties with a similar population.
The reasons are complex, but the extent of private coaching in selective areas has been one of the most powerful arguments against claims that grammar schools increase social mobility and provide opportunities to poorer children.
Some parents spend thousands of pounds a year; there are 11-plus coaching camps in the holidays and the most exclusive tutors are so selective that they offer costly pre-testing to see if pupils as young as seven or eight are eligible for their courses.
The new 11-plus, devised by the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) at Durham University, is supposed to rely less heavily on verbal reasoning and be more closely allied to the primary curriculum. Practice papers for the CEM test are supposed to be less readily available.
Professor Robert Coe, CEM director, says it is too early to judge the new test’s wider social impact: “No test is completely tutor-proof, but we think we have taken the first steps towards making it harder to prepare for. We will continue to change the content so that, hopefully, people will realise that a lot of tutoring is going to bring diminishing returns. However it doesn’t fundamentally alter the public’s attitude towards selection, which is often driven by anxiety rather than rationality. Some parents will go to any length to do what they believe is best for their children. I don’t think you’ll ever get rid of that completely.”
But according to Lewin, the fact that it is modelled on what can be taught in schools means the CEM test is more amenable to coaching: “It is a better test if you believe in just moving around the deckchairs in what is still a very unfair system, because 80% is what we teach at primary school. But if children can’t be taught to get better in maths, why are we teaching it in schools? Practice will make anyone better and I see no sign that tuition has tailed off at all.”
Parents in the thick of it agree. One mother, who has two sons at prep school but still pays for extra tuition, asked to remain anonymous as her eldest son is waiting for his 11-plus results. “People have panicked,” she explains. “There are tutors who claim to be experienced in the CEM test coming from Birmingham, where it is already in use. Papers with the CEM branding are being openly sold on the internet. My younger son has already been rejected by one of these pre-tests. He is dyslexic and the tutor wouldn’t take him. It is heartbreaking for me, and the publicity about the new test has definitely made the situation worse.”
Philip Wayne, headteacher of Chesham grammar school and chairman of the Buckinghamshire grammar schools, says: “We do believe the best preparation for the tests is to develop a child’s ability to read with understanding and to solve problems using their numerical skills: this is what primary schools are doing with their children.
“The term ‘tutor-proof’ is not in the lexicon of the Buckinghamshire grammar schools.
“What we have said is that it is preferable to use a test which reduces any impact, perceived or real, of coaching.” He says that an analysis of grammar schools’ intake will be available in the next few weeks.
But Dr Katy Simmons, chair of governors at Cressex community school in Wycombe, which has high numbers of children eligible for free school meals and from minority ethnic families, doesn’t believe the new test will make much difference: “This test has always damaged individuals and families and de-motivated many young people at a crucial stage of their development,” she says.
“We should be working out how it should be ended, rather than tinkering around the edges.”
