Education Abroad: Minus Eleven-Plus

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Britain's "eleven-plus exam," an IQ measurement plus tests in arithmetic and English composition, was set up in 1944 as the fairest way to channel children into state secondary schools geared to their abilities. But it has turned out to be the infamous instru ment that with dread finality determines whether a child aged 10½ to 11½ is to be high or low in Britain's totemistic society, whether he gets topflight pre-university training or a quick go at a lesser school.

This life-blighting system has anguished parents, embarrassed teachers and worried doctors, who find the young exam takers suffering from all sorts of mental and physical tensions. Eleven-plus is "the invention of the devil," says the Rev. Arthur Morton, director of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Labor Party Leader Harold Wilson argues that "a child's future should not be decided by how many butterflies are in the tummy one cold Saturday morning in February."

Bowing to the criticism, school officials have now abolished the exam in Essex, Leicestershire and Manchester. Last week the influential London County Council (1,300 schools, 425,000 pupils) carried on the trend by dropping the one-shot exam in favor of a wholechild "profile" compiled in primary school years. Results will place primary graduates in one of seven standardized ability groups. Parents will be allowed to "nominate" any two London secondary schools, although a child's profile will determine where he finally goes.

The new system is still far more selective than the open-door policy in most U.S. public high schools, but it puts Britain closer to universal education than ever before. Says one relieved secondary-school administrator: "We haven't the right to write off any child at any age as a failure."