Eleven Plus Responsibility

Should you, for one reason or another, feel that you would like to try to change the attitude of your child towards the Eleven Plus then you may care to work out what it is that you are trying to change.

What you may want, for example, is to ask your child to share the attributes of mutual understanding, reasonableness and justice. If these are rather lofty aspirations – then you could scale the whole experiment down to trying to encourage your child to tackle an eleven plus paper without you reminding him or her. Perhaps the truth will lie some where in between!

It does seem likely that you will need to try to help your child to understand and become aware of his or her own attitudes to eleven plus work.

You will naturally try to help your child to comprehend and absorb all the different emotions that are running around among all parties concerned with the eleven plus examination.

You could, if you wished, go back over the history of the eleven plus and the emergence of grammar school and how children from underprivileged backgrounds were offered the opportunity of education.

Then, and possibly this could have come earlier, you could consider trying to help your child to see that change is possible.

The aim, therefore, is to try to achieve some degree of mutual understanding and respect between you and your eleven plus child. Of course there is preaching to the converted – and that is not the intent but parents do not want to have to become authoritarian – parents want more complex and subtle variations.

Of course a few points follow on:

Can a mother and a father sustain the dual role of parents and eleven plus motivators?

How much time is available – and how can best use be made of that time?

How much responsibility should an eleven year old child assume towards serious and sustained study?

Enjoy the eleven plus year. For many of us it marks the transition from being a child into the world of senior school and academic study. The chance will never come again.