Despite failing the 11+ many years ago I have had a successful and rewarding career in the medical field. However, I still carry with me the shame of having failed the 11+ exam.

I took the 11+ in 1944 and was selected to attend the South East Essex County Technical School at Barking. The school shared the same building, and facilities, as the adult technical college and was excellent in almost every way – wonderful teaching with a very wide range of activities; although I didn’t appreciate it at the time (I thought all schools were like that.) I later came to see that it was one of the best schools in the country, private schools included, and certainly much better than the local grammar school. However, the down side was that there was no sixth form – everyone left at 16 – and I was cast out into the wide world with only the old school certificate (predecessor to GCE) to my name, with the implication that my days in formal education had ended. To cut a long story short, it was not until I reached the age of 21 that I re-entered education as a student on a 2-year course at a teacher training college, 36 before I graduated with a London University external degree in psychology, and 47 before I took my masters degree. The final 18 years of my working life were occupied as a lecturer in education. Make of this what you will!

I felt I had let my parents down when I failed the 11 plus exam. I am still sensitive about it aged 70, it marks you out at a failure for the rest of your life.

I’ve felt an inadequacy in many situations all my life knowing the education my older brother and sister had and the things I didn’t learn at school. No school trips or languages , low job expectations, parental disappointment and brother just assuming I’m stupid. Done moderately alright but never went for promotions for feeling other people were better.

My wife, is a bright, clever, articulate woman in her seventies. She failed her 11+. Despite the shame and feeling of personal failure, she did well enough at the secondary modern to do A levels at the grammar school sixth form. It was a revelation to her 16 year old self that the kids there were no better or cleverer than she was. She secured A levels and went to teacher training college, where she gained firstly a CertEd and then a BEd (hons). She has been a brilliant mother and grandmother, was a highly successful teacher and then set up and ran a day nursery from scratch.

She has yet to shake the shame of the failure at the 11+, nor the in ground feeling that, somehow, she is not good enough.

Sat exam in 1968,and had no idea of what anything was about,could not understand any of the questions at the time,and the results made my mum and dad think I was thick.The school exaggerated that feeling by putting all the pupils in a line as per the results.I was almost at the end of this line….and was made out to be obviously unintellegent.

After,I stood in the stock room with shaking legs,knowing my parents would be even more cross with me….They called me “Low brow”,they were that disappointed…and then moved heaven and earth to get me into a school that they believed had a better reputation than the one I was due to be sent to.

…Net result…a secretive boy,scared of his own shadow…prone to intense violence

I grew in the London Borough of Bexley and took the 11 plus in 1987. Bexley had grammar schools; the neighbouring borough of Greenwich did not. I went to Primary School in Greenwich, and everyone got to take the 11 Plus – but only the children who lived in Bexley would be guaranteed a grammar school place if we passed. Even back then there was talk of families who had two houses, or kids who would move boroughs for a year. I had classmates who were tutored for the 11 plus and friends who were determined to fail so that they wouldn’t be separated from their friends in secondary school.

My Mum had failed her 11 Plus but had passed the 13 Plus and gotten into a grammar school. She was determined that we would get a better education and whilst we weren’t tutored, we had verbal reasoning workbooks as extra homework to do.

I passed the 11 plus – I was told that my best friend and I got the highest scores in the borough. But only I got to go to grammar school as she lived in Greenwich. I was the only child from my primary school to go to my secondary school, which was incredibly isolating.

Overall my school experience was good – our school wasn’t as pretentious some of the other grammar schools, teaching was generally good and some teachers were excellent, and I think we took in a lot of students who got kicked out elsewhere – there were rumours always about schools ditching students who they didn’t think would get good GCSE results. We had one teacher who used to tell us that we were the top 25% and I used to wonder what the other 75% were getting in that case as some lessons were really poor.

I’ve never understood why a test at 11 should be allowed to dictate your whole future and create such a divide. Grammar schools need to be abolished.

I passed the test in 1966. Only 9 out of 90 pupils in the school I was in passed. I was bullied afterwards by children at the primary school because I had only moved into the area in October the preceding year, and in their view I had stolen a place from a girl who was expected to pass.

At the grammar later I felt socially excluded – only 2 other pupils from my previous school whom I didn’t know well anyhow as I’d only known them 10 months. A particular school in the “posh” part of town sent 50% of its pupils by intensive coaching – a lot of these girls ended up in the lowest stream in the end, it was quite noticeable.

There was a uniform but it was easy to see who was poor and who was rich – rich girls went to an independent outfitters where the clothes were of better materials and better cut, the average person went to the Co-op where the clothes were distinctly inferior. The poor got hand me downs or tried to make it themselves – 6 gore skirt anyone?

I did get excellent A levels but due to total lack of career advice, and pressure to go to University, I studied biology at a Russell Group university which led nowhere.

(I would have been much better off IMO training as a radiographer or physiotherapist or similar, even nursing, but I was steered away from such practical choices as in those days they did not involve a University course and so I would not garner kudos for the school.

I am a 70 years old who passed the 11+ and went to grammar school in a very affluent area. I felt like a fish out of water. I was constantly reminded that my class mates and myself may have had the skills to pass that ridiculous test but in every other aspect of our lives we were so different. I was even told to choose a red brick rather than established university as that was more appropriate for someone from my background. I left that school lacking confidence and constantly feeling I needed to prove myself. I recently revisited the school and was struck by the smug attitude of both staff and pupils. The sense of entitlement to facilities that I have never seen in any comprehensive school was powerful. All the grammar school system does is increase the class divide

I failed the 11 plus at the interview stage – I was borderline. Being called into a small room to be asked seemingly random questions by strange adults in order to decide if i went to grammar school or not at the age of 10 was humiliating and terrifying. Why doesn’t the train from Haslemere go through Hindhead on the way to Liphook ? I said because it isn’t on the way, but they informed me that it was because Hindhead is on a hill, but OBVIOUSLY you wouldn’t take the train all the way up the hill to Hindhead from Haslemere because the people on the train would be furious if you did that. Idiots! Then I admitted that I didn’t go to the library as often as I would like which obviously marked me down, but I was from an evangelical working class family which only had books on the Bible at home, and who stopped me from reading anything that wasn’t ‘edifying’ so the fact that I went to the library independently at all would have been pretty surprising if they had known anything at all about me. The fact that I can recount these questions, and my answers, and my shame at the realisation of having said the wrong thing 53 years after the event gives you some sense of the enormity of it. I loved primary school: I can still see and smell the papier mache model of Portland, Chesil Beach and Lulworth Cove that we made after the trip to Lyme Regis which changed me forever (I sat on my suitcase when I got home and refused to unpack, and I sit on the cliff above Durdle Door now as I write this); I can remember the story I used to write in creative writing that went on and on (I refused to start a new one) about a hidden world up on Blackdown Common where dinosaurs roamed which was so real I was determined to get all my friends to come down to Haslemere so I could take them to see it; I remember the beauty and wonder of the three dimensional shapes we made in maths and hung in the school hall; and the full size model we made of the lunar landing module in science. Every subject was a treasure store of exciting and wonderful knowledge and experiences. So … then to secondary school. All my friends went to grammar school, and I had none from that moment on until I got to university (up until then I had regularly gone to stay the night at my friends Charles’ and Julian’s houses – I never did that again). I can’t recall a single moment of the joy of education from that moment, until I finally refound my love of English through Miss Blewett in the 4th form, (although the tedium and stupidity of woodwork and metalwork stays with me). I sat English O level a year early, and in the mocks I got a higher mark than anyone in the year above me. Clearly there was no question about me not going to sixth form where I was surrounded by grammar school and private school kids whose self confidence reinforced the sense of my failure and deep shame of having spent five years in what felt like a penitentiary. I got into my first choice: Leeds University, to do English Literature, just, but I suffered deeply from imposter syndrome and when I went back to the campus for the first time about 40 years later I wept and wept for the time I wasted there, too terrified to speak in a seminar, too easily persuaded that getting drunk and stoned was a more fitting culmination to my educational journey. I was very nearly thrown out in the third year, and I did the very least I could to be allowed to take finals – inevitably a 2.2. Failing the 11 plus shaped my whole experience of education, but more significantly it turned the happy, sociable, lover of learning at 10 years old into the stereotypically teengage misfit on steriods, chronically unable to communicate with parents or peers, the perfect prey for the local paedophile to exploit. I have worked for 20 years in widening participation, helping young working class people see the opportunities that higher education can offer. I wonder if it’s a form of working my educational experience out, it is certainly a way of ensuring that others with the potential to benefit from higher education will be able to make the most of it, and a desire that they can have the positive experience of learning that I didn’t have. Above all I tell young people whenever I get the chance that they are unique and special, and that there is a whole world of opportunity out there available to them if they say yes to it. I don’t remember anyone ever saying that to me.

I passed the 11 plus in 1958 and went on to graduate in economics. I was part of a 5% minority of children from poor families that got to grammar school. 95% of poorer children went to secondary moderns. After my separation from her mother my daughter wanted to come and live with me and I made sure she could go to a grammar school because I lived in Kent. Thanks to my education I was able to follow a career in banking and become socially mobile. I now recognise that I could have achieved all this in a less selective system. So could my daughter who is now a Senior Lecturer at a university. Grammar schools are for upper middle-class kids who go to prep schools so that they can avoid private school fees. Grammar schools are not the future. It´s worth saying that I did not have to pay fees at university, but I did have a means tested grant for living expenses. I believe every young person has the right to an education like mine.

I was selected for Weymouth Grammar School in 1966, it was a large, newly built school with excellent facilities. But in retrospect it was clear that the academic approach did not work for me. I used to daydream at the back of the class about rocket-packs and other inventions. I got four poor ‘;O’ levels, and was allowed to continue to ‘A’ levels because they could see i had some useful skills. The recommendation was that i should study Pure Maths, Applied Maths, and Physics, the idea probably being that total saturation would cure my problem with academic learning. It didn’t work, and i remember the maths teacher handing out the results of the Pure Maths ‘mock exam’; “Brooks, at least you got your name right”. I left school without an A level necessary to proceed to some sort of engineering course, and in the ‘three day week’ of 1973 i found work making motorcycle fairings out if glassfibre. I have since discovered that the teaching style that works for me is ‘project based’ learning, that if you need to use pure maths to solve a problem in an engaging project then you will work at it. The key is current relevance, not jumping through hoops to notch up qualifications. I am from a relatively privileged middle class family, and i wonder if that influenced my selection for Grammar School. I can see now that it is both unjust, and potentially damaging, to select children at the age of 11 for Grammar School education. Comprehensive Schools allow skills and aptitudes to develop as the child develops in maturity and agency.

Despite, gaining a 2:1 in my thirties and a post grad qualification, I still feel deep down I’m not good enough. The secondary modern school I went to in the seventies never mentioned university and we were taken on tours of local factories for our careers advice. The emphasis was on preparing us for work, these factories all closed in the eighties. Thankfully, at that time, adult education was still funded and I worked hard at evening classes to leave behind the ‘certificates of secondary education’ I was awarded in 1976, (worthless and stigmatising). As long as the grammar school system exists

Being one of a handful of genuinely ‘working class’ pupils at grammar school made me feel like I didn’t ‘belong’ and wasn’t good enough, from age 11. The middle class and wealthy kids had confidence, life experiences (such as regular holidays and activities), and supportive parents who knew and understood many social expectations of which my parents had no view. I could tell there was a ‘two-tier’ approach from the teachers; it was as if they could sense those of us who were ‘imposters’ and I never received the encouragement or pastoral support from my grammar school that I needed. The system worked only for those who were already primed with middle class norms and expectations. I started year 7 a confident and capable child and within months felt inferior, leaving school at age 18 with no real ambitions or plan because I believed that university wasn’t really for girls like me. It took me 20 years to win back the confidence and sense of belonging that my 11-year-old self had. I am a member of Mensa and have managed a decent career, but since grammar school I had always felt ‘averagely’ smart and overly self-conscious about my background and my accent. This absolutely came from spending seven formative years being the odd one out for having no money, cheap clothes, no hobbies, no day trips or holidays, and having to work almost full time from age 16 to contribute at home. I moved out of a grammar area after my son was born so he could avoid the whole damaging system.

I was forced to take the 11+ 40 years ago, both my sisters had gone to the grammar school and the pressure for me to get a place there was overwhelming and really stressful. I passed and went to a school where I received a very average education and always felt like the stupid kid there – It’s a myth that grammar schools offer a better education for bright kids – they will always look good on the league tables because they cream off the most academically able. My children go to the local comprehensive and receive an exceptional education with dedicated teachers who are able to teach to all abilities, we should be focusing on these schools rather than diverting attention and funding to grammar schools that are wholly unnecessary

This is a story from nearly 60 years ago, I hope it is acceptable here. My brother and I both took the 11+, two years apart. My brother passed after an interview. I later flew through my exam. I fared pretty well at grammar school, although not an intellectual I enjoyed most of the subjects and did reasonably well at O and A level. I was however, owing to the expectations placed on grammar school students, guided into a degree course to which I really was not suited. My brother however was never suited to the more academic approach of the grammar school. He has always been more practically minded. He struggled and came out with poor results. I do believe that if there had not been selection, had we been allowed to explore and improve our talents we would both have benefitted in our different ways.

My sister and I with 2 and a half year’s age difference and indifferent primary school records both passed the 11+. My brother, between me and my sister in age and with an excellent and consistent primary school record, failed his 11+. This may well have been because of a change of class teacher just before the exam. My parents appealed, to no avail as the new class teacher did not support this. My brother had no choice but to go to the local secondary modern. This still affects his self-confidence and he has said that I was the clever one in the family. Not so. Having attended a grammar school which later turned comprehensive and later taught in comprehensive schools I am clear that the 11+ is a flawed way of discerning a pupil’s ability and that a good comprehensive school is by far the best way of giving every child a real chance of a real education.

I was an incredibly anxious child when I took the 11+ over 40 years ago. I wasn’t coached – none of us were in those days, and God knows, my mum couldn’t have afforded a tutor. I was terrified on the day of the exam and was probably in tears by the end of it. I received a ‘borderline’ result, neither pass nor fail. I remember experiencing a sense of failure – most of my friends had passed, just as my sister had 2 years before. I don’t remember anyone else who got this result in my junior school. I had to be interviewed at school and show and discuss my schoolwork. I was equally nervous in the interview – my abiding memory is backing out of the room at the end and stumbling over a chair. However, I passed the interview and went to the same grammar school as my sister. Fast forward 30 years and my own three daughters all went to comprehensive schools. And they were excellent schools. All parents want for their children are good local schools. These days grammar schools just favour wealthy families who can afford private tutors – the enemy of social mobility.

A major problem that was not considered when the 11 Plus exam was being developed was where you have siblings, one passes the 11 Plus and the other does not, this puts an ax into family life, siblings no longer have a shared experiences; in my case I failed the 11 Plus and went to the local Secondary Modern where as my twin sister and elder brother both passed and went to the local Grammar School. There was a considerable overlap and my siblings were in the same school for three or four years, inevitably my siblings had in school jokes , events special to their own school that I was unable to share with. I felt excluded , shunned. this was very bad for me. I hid my grief from my family as they could not comprehend my deep feeling of loss, a feeling of loss 66 years later that has not gone away..

In 1967 I failed the 11+. This was not expected. My two older sisters had passed the 11+. My mother went to the Grammar school, and most of my cousins too. My Dad was an orphan and left school at the age of 14.

One of my great aunts told me I was the ‘dumb dumb’ of the family. My primary school Headmaster told me that I was not as good as my sister, whom he had also taught.

My Dad gave me the news that I had failed the 11+. That was the worst, all I wanted to do was cry and get a big hug, but I was brought up not to cry in front of men, not even your dad.

At the age of 14 I was diagnosed as dyslexic. My Head Teacher told me my intelligence rating, but I had to promise that I was not to tell anybody what that was. I never have, but it gave me no shame.

Schools in those days were segregated, not co-ed. My secondary modern school taught me a lot. Some of the girls were anything but lady like. I learnt to get on with them and even like them. I got on with most of my classmates. I had the privilege of being the Head Girl in my 5th year.

There were holes in my education. History, for example, we learnt about the stone age three times and for the Tudors we were tasked with colouring in pictures of the clothes they wore. We were entered into CSE exams. I got straight A’s, apart from English, for which I got a ‘B’. I have heard it said that if you got an ‘A’ at CSE you should have been entered for an O’Level. I gained entry to the grammar school 6th form, but I was miserable and did not do very well. My number one subject had been mathematics, but the maths teacher at the grammar school would not let me join her 6th form class because the maths I was taught was modern maths (set theory, Ven diagrams etc.).

I found that the pupils at the grammar school were taught how to pass exams. I scraped through my A ‘Levels and was awarded a place at a polytechnic to study for an HND in Computer Studies. I enjoyed that, but my sister told me that an HND was another way of saying “not good enough to do a degree”, so I did not go to the award ceremony. I went on to work as a mainframe computer programmer and climbed the career ladder. I retired as a Principal IT Business Analyst.