This seems like a pretty good way of identifying the most intelligent pupils who haven't had a great education but have developed some of the intellectual skills needed for higher study. Interestingly whilst she denounces it as an act of an unreformed left winger, in the USA where aptitude tests are widely used by higher education institutions, notably in the form of the SAT, it is largely the right that supports them and the left which opposes them. I don't think Melanie Phillips is even being internally consistent:So he is expected to condemn 'positive discrimination' that gives preferential places to applicants from poor schools.
Yet at the same time, he is said to want universities to offer places to such pupils with lower grades, backed up by aptitude tests.
What was the 11+ if not an aptitude test? If it is a good system for identifying talented 11 year olds why is it class war to apply it to college age students?But a key factor behind that shameful situation was the destruction of the grammar school.
This was Britain's historic engine of social mobility. Selective education is the single most effective vehicle ever devised for propelling poor children out of disadvantage.
Update: Here's a suggestion for a Thinking Skills Assessment that would act as an aptitude test for British Universities.
10 comments:
"This seems like a pretty good way of identifying the most intelligent pupils who haven't had a great education but have developed some of the intellectual skills needed for higher study..."
Exactly. What the hell's wrong with people?
in the USA where aptitude tests are widely used by higher education institutions, notably in the form of the SAT, it is largely the right that supports them and the left which opposes them
This is so.
Well I suppose she would argue that it's like having an 11+, but ignoring the results if the pupil does well on an IQ test held at the same time.
The logic of a lot of grammar school arguments escapes me. We're led to believe that the current problem is because 25% of parents are so pushy about their children's education they are willing to pay enormous house prices to get into the best comprehensives. Introduce an 11+ and only 6.25% of these children will go to the grammar school, with a wave of social mobility as 18.75% come from the remaining 75%. And the 18.75% who did go to the best comprehensive schools because of their super-pushy parents are now going to go to secondary moderns and...their parents apparently are going to go go 'It's a fair cop Melanie, all can't have prizes and our children - who we were willing last week to spend tens of thousands of pounds on moving area to get into a good school - will just have to suffer'.
I just don't see it happening.
"the 18.75% who did go to the best comprehensive schools because of their super-pushy parents are now going to go to secondary moderns and..."
Which is why grammar schools are more popular as an abstract idea than as a reality. I can remember an article by William Rees Mogg saying that when he was canvassing in the 1960s one of the biggest sources of anger was from middle class parents whose children didn't get into them.
I've said before that it is a mistake to assume that the only two alternatives for secondary education are the 11+ system and the comprehensive system. Both ideas put control of what education children receive into the hands of bureaucrats.
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Yes, Milburn is indeed right. The stranglehold of the priviliged on top universities & jobs is something that should concern us. To an extent intelligence is inherited, to an extent the middle classes will overall offer a more educationally-oriented upbringing, but neither of those account for the huge imbalances in existence now.
A raw intelligence test will encourage bright pupils from modet homes & discourage those who can be drilled to pass A Levels but haven't got brains. The former would blossom in a university. I myself wasn't any kind of academic success, yet my performance soared once I was on campus in an aspirational community & I soon overtook those middle-class fuckwits who'd had advantages over me but weren't as clever.
The 11+ was essentially an IQ test. A lot of middle-class pupils failed it, which is why the Tories never restored it. Their constituency was happy living near better comprehensives or paying to go private & didn't want to take their chances in a system where someone like me might show up Tarquin & Georgia.
I passed the 11+ for a grammar school outside my local area. I didn't go because I didn't know anyone who was going there.
I agree with all of that.
The tests used in America are not exactly without their problems. Mind you, there is a compelling case that A-levels aren't up to much any more.
No system is without problems, the question has to be whether any alternative system is better.
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