As part of its plan to expand the number of grammar schools, the Government has proposed making ‘tutor-proof’ tests. Unfortunately, this is more difficult to accomplish than Theresa May imagines and even if it were realistic, it might not solve the problem of under-representation of poor children in grammar schools.
It’s possible to make this argument thanks to the large amount of scientific literature on the effects of practice and coaching on cognitive test performance. This is based on the popularity of such tests in job and educational selection over the decades and the results are both clear and consistent. Practice and coaching do have positive effects. What’s more, coaching has an effect over and above that of practice alone. These effects are modest in magnitude – equivalent to a gain of three to four IQ points. But they are certainly big enough to cause distorting effects amongst that group of marginal candidates close to the selection cut-off.
These coaching effects are generally greater for more abstract cognitive tasks, such as non-verbal reasoning tests like Raven’s
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