Newcomers to England who start a family are often slow to realise that one of the biggest factors in the Game of Life here starts with the 11-plus exam. If your children are at a school where anyone is sitting such exams, you may find – as I did – that your children want to have a go. You then realise, as Alan Bennett put it in The History Boys, that ‘the boys and girls against whom your child is to compete have been groomed like thoroughbreds for this one particular race’. And after the exam comes the interview. Another race.
As a parent, this process is hateful. The idea of someone passing judgment on so young a child is awful
Scots have nothing like it and I’m not sure many other countries do. The 11-plus is perhaps the world’s toughest test for children of that age. Software programs such as Atom can now predict, often with striking accuracy, how your child will fare.
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