Marketing

Unforced entry

Entrance exams are failing to distinguish between those of actual ability and those who have been coached by over-enthusiastic parents. Christopher Ray reveals how they resolve this dilemma at The Manchester Grammar School

The 11+ is alive and well: state-maintained grammar schools and over-subscribed selective 11-18 independent schools have come to rely on these tests – so often variations on English, mathematics, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. Even more alive and well is the industry that the 11+ system has promoted: private tutors and independent junior schools put huge amounts of energy into preparing their charges for the rigours of entrance examinations.

Many of these examinations are meant to identify achievement and spot potential. However, while examinations are fairly good at determining what a child knows (or doesn’t know), they are far less helpful when it comes to recognising potential. At The Manchester Grammar School (MGS), we are making a resolute effort to adjust the balance towards potential.

Just as teaching to the test has plagued key stage SATS in the state-maintained sector and GCSEs and A-levels more generally, it is hard for independent schools to avoid the temptation to focus strongly on the demands of the 11+: their reputations are at stake. Careful and sustained preparation for entrance examinations (with practice, past papers, yet more practice, and just to make sure a few more past papers) exemplifies the experience of pupils in the final years of primary education.

Pity the poor pupil who does not have the backing to face the 11+ with plenty of training and match practice in the bag: a child nervously walking to the wicket to face a first eleven bowler. What is much worse, however, is the well-coached child who has the skills to play the 11+ game, but who is not able to develop his or her game to the point that he or she might face with a degree of confidence a county class or even international player.

The use of verbal and non-verbal reasoning tests is a brave attempt to focus on potential rather than achievement. However, clever coaching can lift performance here too, albeit in the short- to medium-term.

Getting better
If a child is to flourish in an academically selective school, then that child must have the potential to excel academically. At MGS we believe that the best way to identify that potential is through the use of a combination of tests (we still have an entrance examination at 11) and, perhaps more importantly, teaching. How a child responds to our teachers enables us to gauge just how much he is likely to develop and flourish here.

We invite small groups of boys into the school for a day and teach them ideas and concepts that they will not have encountered in any clear-cut way. We observe, carefully, how they respond. We use this approach for entrance at 9, 10 and 11.

The best preparation for our entrance “assessments” then becomes challenging, inspiring, often divergent teaching rather than narrow, convergent coaching: just what we really need in schools. Most primary teachers would like to break free more often from the constraints of narrow tests. At MGS, we want to give them the chance to do so.

At the end of the day
When boys finish a day at MGS, they are typically excited and full of praise for the experience. They go back to their schools and families, telling their friends and parents that they have just had the best-ever day in school. When it comes to marketing, these boys are doing our job for us.

MGS is committed to recruiting the brightest and best irrespective of their social, cultural or financial background. Our approach to assessment aims to level the playing field as much as possible: we are looking for enquiring young minds, wherever we might find them.

Dr Christopher Ray is High Master at The Manchester Grammar School.

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