Newcomers to England who start a family are often slow to realise that one of the biggest factors in the Game of Life here starts with the 11-plus exam. If your children are at a school where anyone is sitting such exams, you may find – as I did – that your children want to have a go. You then realise, as Alan Bennett put it in The History Boys, that ‘the boys and girls against whom your child is to compete have been groomed like thoroughbreds for this one particular race’. And after the exam comes the interview. Another race.
As a parent, this process is hateful. The idea of someone passing judgment on so young a child is awful
Scots have nothing like it and I’m not sure many other countries do. The 11-plus is perhaps the world’s toughest test for children of that age. Software programs such as Atom can now predict, often with striking accuracy, how your child will fare. In theory, no preparation is needed for the interview. In practice, the most serious parents have been prepping their kids for years.
The teachers want to see if the child matches their exam result and will ask questions to test their peripheral knowledge. The issue is that many children of that age specialise in one-syllable answers and need to rehearse being expansive. Mumsnet, perhaps Britain’s most ferocious intelligence-gathering network, shares the kind of questions you can expect, as reported by its members.
There are staples. Favourite subject? What book are they reading? Then, up a notch to test the child’s ability to think on their feet. What does religion mean to them? If they were PM for a day, what would they change? There are also questions that would stump most adults. How would you describe yellow to a blind person? What business would you create if money was no object? How would early civilisations have coped without the number zero?
Prep schools ready pupils for this assault course, but my children went to a state primary and weren’t prepared for any of it.
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