For as long as most parents can recall, families with children who have high academic aspirations have dreaded the weeks between July and September every summer. Even before the holiday tan fades, the school bags emerge from the cupboard. Kitchen tables are piled high with old papers. Due to the consistent demand, tutors reserve their time in advance. For many years, summer in England has been more akin to an extended exam rehearsal than a school holiday for a particular kind of ten-year-old. It appears that a few grammar schools have concluded that this has been going on long enough.
Eight schools, including the historically significant Reading School in Berkshire and the seven grammar schools in Gloucestershire known locally as the G7, have announced that their 11-plus entrance exams will now take place in July instead of September. The shift has an almost technical, administrative sound. It isn’t. These schools are attempting to remove the exam from a time slot that has been nearly exclusively occupied by private tutoring for many years by testing students at the end of Year 5 rather than the beginning of Year 6.
The head teacher of Reading School, which was established in 1125 and is therefore difficult to accuse of following fads, made the point clearly. During what he called some of the best summers of their lives, kids should be exploring the world and running around instead of working on practice papers. A headteacher at one of the oldest schools in England making that claim has a subtly moving quality. It’s the kind of thing that, once said, is dismissed as obvious, even though it seemed necessary.
The timing change’s reasoning is fairly simple. Financially secure families hire tutors for the summer. Most low-income families either cannot or do not. As a result, the six-week holiday has served as an unofficial advantage period for wealthier applicants, increasing their scores in ways that might not be related to the fundamental skills the test is meant to assess. By rescheduling the test for July, kids will be tested while still in school, at what one headteacher described as their “peak academic performance,” before the summer break begins and tutors take over.
To be honest, it’s still unclear if this change will significantly change the socioeconomic profile of grammar school intake. Tutoring isn’t limited to the summer. Children will continue to be prepared twelve months a year by families who can afford to do so. One particular benefit—the dedicated summer cramming window—is eliminated by the change, but the overall tutoring industry surrounding the 11-plus is strong and flexible. The change from September to July might have more symbolic meaning than practical significance.
Watching this play out gives me the impression that grammar schools are dealing with something truly challenging. They work in a selective system that many educators find difficult to defend on the basis of equality, but they are now clearly attempting to lessen its bias. The head teacher of Cheltenham’s Pate’s Grammar School expressed the desire for kids to complete their exams and then just enjoy a summer like all ten-year-olds should. The policy detail itself is not as important as the framing, which subtly admits that the current arrangement has been flawed. It may depend more on whether those words land as intended than on the data whether or not other schools follow.
