Are deputies listening to experts as 11-plus debate continues?

1. The 11-plus examination is cruel to children. It is a source of unnecessary stress in the home and it distorts the education of each child in every primary school.

2. The 11-plus is not a test of intelligence or of the potential of the 10-year-old children who undertake it.

3. The 11-plus rewards a minority of children who have mastered the technique of doing the tests sold to schools by private education providers.

4. Most children who are eligible to do the test will fail the test, or not participate, rather than face more blows to their confidence.

5. The 11-plus adds expense and stress to households and parents feel forced to pay for private tutors to train their children in the techniques of the test, adding strain to squeezed household budgets.

6. This pain for families and pressure on children is at the behest of the Grammar School.

7. The Grammar School is the only beneficiary of this unfair system. It ensures that their classrooms are filled while the high schools may close in future due to falling pupil numbers.

8. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has urged politicians to abolish the 11-plus and ensure that all children are included in admission arrangements in post-primary schools. For the same reasons, every human rights body has expressed their opposition to a system.

9. It divides children and families. Primary schools are at the heart of our island community. Children make friends from the area, parents meet at the school gates and get involved in activities which support school life, such as nativity plays and sports days and school outings.

10. When children move on to the same second-level school, this web of informal relationships remains. The school benefits and so does the community. Selection disrupts relationships, lengthens travel and makes it difficult to develop a strong network of local schools.

11. The social mix enjoyed by primary schools is disrupted, with children from better-off families taking up a disproportionate number of places in Grammar schools. Few pupils at Grammar are from States housing. This means that the educational task for teachers in high schools is tougher, with children who feel that they have been branded as 'failures' at such a young age.

12. This division also means that the 'pull effect' of brighter children encouraging their friends to try a little harder is reduced.

13. Academic selection damages social mobility. This amounts to the decline in upward social mobility, with lower-income families.

14. The only people who believe in the 11-plus system are those who are nostalgic for their old school or who have a vested interest in the continuation of unfairness and inequality.

15. I know of no other developed country that separates its children at 11 on the basis of a supposed academic test.

16. Most educational experts, teachers and parents of pupils agree that, if differentiation is to occur, it should happen as it does now, at the age 16 years, based on GCSE results.

17. All pupils, regardless of background, family income, place of birth or location of primary school attended, should be guaranteed a broad and balanced choice of subjects at age 11 to 16. This would mean that there would be no point in continuing the use of academic selection at 11.

JOHN SEMENOWICZ,

cossack99@rock.com