Several contributors (myself included) have written before for Slugger on the effects on young people (especially boys) of the Transfer Test. The comments reported by Mark Bain in Thursday’s Belfast Telegraph from Danny Baker MLA (SF) on the effects of the 11-Plus exam on our children, took courage to make and reinforce what teachers like myself have seen in the classroom and within our own families
A Stormont MLA has opened up about how failing his 11-plus exam had left him feeling like “a failure” and how it was only through luck rather than the support of the education system that he progressed in life.
Sinn Fein MLA Danny Baker was speaking as Stormont’s Education Committee heard evidence from Emma Shaw, founder of the Phoenix Education Centre, which helps to support underachieving young people across east Belfast.
“I grew up in Twinbrook, had free school meals,” Mr Baker told the committee. “In 1992 I failed my 11-plus and that failure stuck with me for a very, very long time.
“It was only probably through a wee bit of luck that I got some of my GCSEs and that I ran into a summer when I picked up a book and loved it. For some reason that gave me confidence and I wanted to do A Levels.
“I get to sit here today and it’s a very privileged job,” he continued. “Too many people will write you off.
Early in February our P7 children will receive a message about their supposed ability that will affect them for life. After a full year of effort, following hours of after school coaching, having completed two special, highly publicized tests they will be told whether they are ‘good enough’ to be allowed into grammar school. For over half of them the message will be negative and being ‘turned-off’ education is a real danger. Why work at Maths or English when your education system has already told you that you are ‘not clever’?
Schools like the one I taught at until retirement, spend much of a child’s first year at their new school rebuilding their confidence and persuading pupils that they are in fact “clever”, that the 11-Plus should not define them. Some pupils are reassured and keep working at school, but some (especially the boys) will have accepted the message that they will always be underachievers and believe therefore, that there is no point in working hard.
Even the way Mr Baker above dismisses his GCSE success as luck (rather than hard work from himself and his teachers) shows how our views of academic effort need a rethink.
The Logic of the Transfer Test
We know that those who argue for Transfer Tests at 11 are not being perverse or deliberately cruel to children. There is some apparent logic on their side. It can feel almost obvious that if you put kids with the same level of ability together that is innately fair; but this is based on the fallacy that an arbitrary test at 11 can truly assess any child’s innate ability.
The argument that the alternative to academic selection is selection by postcode (& therefore house price) is a more difficult one to counter. However, under the Dickson Plan in the Portadown and Lurgan areas children are allowed to wait until the age of 14 before any selection on academic ability. This avoids the stress placed on pupils aged 11 and, by the age of 14, many pupils will have a much clearer idea of their own ability and aptitude for study and will self-select, rather than being selected.
Surviving a Flawed System
The Transfer Test is a deeply flawed system and there is a clear trend towards schools abandoning this divisive test, but for the moment this is the system that many parents have to work with.
All secondary schools teach the same curriculum and offer more or less the same GCSES, all secondary schools are ‘academic’, even if they offer non-academic courses to some of their Y11&12 pupils. Many non-grammars have Sixth Forms with a high number of pupils going on to university.
Success is possible at any school, but pupils must be persuaded that their intelligence is not fixed at the age of 11, you can develop your brain in your teens, just as you can develop your muscles IF you decide to keep working at school.
Previous Slugger articles on the Transfer Test:
https://sluggerotoole.com/2024/11/20/the-mental-health-challenge-of-the-transfer-test-part-2/
https://sluggerotoole.com/2019/10/19/a-reflection-on-the-education-system-in-northern-ireland/
Arnold is a retired teacher from Lisburn, now living in Belfast.
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