Memory Lane 20

25th January 2025, Phil Mirams (September 63 – June 66) writes: 

I feel I must write to you in response to something in John Prior’s letter in ‘The Snob’ Issue no 5. 

In his opening paragraph John says that “the 11+ exam was nothing to worry about” and I’m sure John meant this from his own personal position and wasn’t implying that if one failed the 11+ one “was a bit of a thickie” to quote Blackadder. 

However, I failed the 11+ and indeed the Moray House exam, also known as the 13+ and I got into St Nicks by luck rather than selection. 

My father was in the RAF until I was 18 and the first 2 years of my secondary school education in Germany was provided by the British Forces Education Service in which operated a comprehensive system long before it became commonplace in civvy street. As I had done well and was in the ‘A’ stream in most subjects, after some considerable deliberation St Nicks finally agreed to accept me and put me in form 3B for the start of the autumn term 1963. 

At the end of my first year I finished top of the class and at the end of my time there I passed 7 ‘O’ levels. I mention this not in order to blow my own trumpet but simply to highlight that if my father had been a civilian, I would have been consigned to a secondary modern school and effectively written off. In fact, in the early 1960s there weren’t even Certificates of Secondary Education (CSEs) so there was nothing for children to aim for at all in secondary modern schools, and little incentive for the teachers. 

Selection based on one exam at the age of 11 must have stopped thousands of children from realising their potential. Furthermore, it is my understanding, there was no set pass mark in the 11+; if there were only 100 grammar school places available in a particular education authority then pupils with the top 100 marks got those places. It was entirely possible for someone in another education authority to obtain a place with a lower mark simply because there were more places available. 

I am grateful for the education I received at St Nicks but it is my view that selection for grammar school was elitist and socially divisive as it discriminated against children from a disadvantaged background and had no moral justification in a modern democratic society.

(first published December 2024 in Newsletter 7)