Eleven Plus Development

Mental Development is supposed to grow rapidly during early childhood and the intermediate years and gradually tape off in late adolescence. There is a graph which suggests that one half of child's mental status is achieved by the age of three and at ten years old and by around ten years old about eighty percent of mental capacity will have been reached. Every parent must be reassured to know that the terminal point for advances in mental development occurs at around twenty one.

Another figure that is quoted quite often is that there is only about 0.6 correlation between mental ability and test scores. This means that there are many factors other than mental ability that enter into school success.

Factors like teaching methods, exposure to the the correct eleven plus syllabus, the child's interests along with social, physical and emotional security must all play their part.

A child who does very well on verbal reasoning questions but who is not motivated to do well at school may not do as well in the eleven plus examination as a child who is focused on winning a place at grammar school.

It would be very interesting to read about research into verbal and non verbal reasoning test results at the age of eight - and future success in `A' level results.

Great decisions are made about children aged ten years old - that could affect their future education. Surely the results of the eleven plus - in some cases - must be treated with great caution. There must be a case to argue that it is likely that there could be fluctuations in test scores. Thus a child who is denied a place in grammar school because he or she is one or two marks off the pass rate may have a case that their appeal needs to treated sympathetically.