Letter: Academic selection is not evil but testing children at 11 is highly stressful and has major negative effects on them

As a retired teacher I agree with William Kitchen that it is a gross exaggeration to call academic selection at 11, ‘evil’ or ‘child abuse’ (‘Academic selection is not evil and it is outrageous to say it is,’ November 20).

However, his argument in favour of academic selection does not adequately deal with the major negative effects on many 11-year-olds.

Even though testing can be stressful for pupils (and the marking workload for teachers is significant) I am very much in favour of giving pupils the opportunity to show what they have learned and what parts of the course they need further work on. As a teacher and head of department in a non-selective school, I was always careful to explain to our pupils that the testing was designed to find out if we teachers had taught the topic effectively, that it was not a battle between pupils.

Handled correctly (avoiding comparison between pupils) testing can be positive but the 11-Plus is not that sort of test. It is a high stake, high stress competition between children.

Many pupils tend to believe that intelligence is fixed, that you are born clever, or not clever. Boys in particular are keen to find out where they rank in comparison with others. It helps them decide whether or not more effort is worthwhile. They believe that if you are intelligent then more effort might possibly mean higher achievement, but if you are not intelligent then more effort will just bring humiliation. Trying hard and failing is much more embarrassing than making no effort and pretending not to care.

Academic selection at 11 feeds the myth that if you haven’t got the hang of school by P7, you have somehow failed and have to be sectioned off, your future now set in stone. 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.

The underachievement of Protestant boys is regularly discussed – I believe that the damage caused by academic selection to their self-image is a major factor.

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 will have accepted the message that they will always be underachievers and believe therefore there is no point in working hard. We should not be surprised when some give up and achieve lower results than those children not damaged by the 11-Plus labelling system.

My experience of teaching indicates that pupil attitudes to their own ability and to learning was central to their success. It should not be surprising that pupils selected by the ‘academic sorting hat’ feel more positive and work harder at school, while those rejected feel more negatively about academic effort, especially because their classroom peers will reinforce the belief that academic effort is not for them.

When a child gets their transfer test results, parents should be ready to deal with disappointment and persuade them that they are loved, that they are clever and need to keep working towards success at school. 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.

AJ Carton, Belfast BT6