Welholme Road Schools

The proportion of 'free places' at grammar schools in England and Wales had increased from about a third to almost half between 1913 and 1937. However, when poorer children were offered free places, parents often had to turn them down owing to the extra costs involved. The plans for post-Second World War secondary education in Britain aimed to remove the inequalities which remained in the system were developed by R. A. Butler In 1941, he became president of the board of education in Winston Churchill's wartime coalition. Here he oversaw policy to launch the Education Act that popularly bears his name - the act that introduced free secondary education for the first time in Britain. It was the only significant piece of legislation relating to post-war social reform that was passed by the coalition. The Act was implemented in 1944 and a vital component of the legislation was what came to be known as the Eleven Plus Examination.

The Act established the Tripartite System of education, with an academic, a technical and a functional strand. Prevailing educational thought at the time was that testing was an effective way to discover to which strand a child was most suited. The results of the exam would be used to match a child’s secondary school to their abilities and future career needs. Under the Act schooling in the United Kingdom was rearranged so that children would be entitled to free education between the ages of 5 and 15. So children aged 5-11 would attend a primary school, and children aged 11-15 would attend a Secondary school. At this time there were three types of Secondary schools - Grammar Schools, Secondary Modern Schools and Technical Schools (or Colleges). Each school was designed to fit in with the child's capablities, so a Grammar School would suit those who were academic and wanted to go on to university, whilst a Technical School suited those who wished to pursue a trade, with a Secondary Modern fitting somewhere in between. All children took the 11 Plus exam in their final year of primary school and, based on their performance in this exam, they would then go onto one of these three types of secondary education.

The structure of the Eleven Plus examination varied over time, and among the different counties which used it. Usually, it consisted of three papers:

•Arithmetic — A mental arithmetic test.

•Writing — An essay question on a general subject.

•General Problem Solving — A test of general knowledge, assessing the ability to apply logic to simple problems.

Most children took the Eleven Plus transfer test examination in their final year of primary school: usually at age 10 or 11

When the system was implemented, the technical schools did not appear on the scale envisaged. Instead, the Tripartite System came to be characterised by fierce competition for places at the prestigious grammar schools. As such, the Eleven Plus took on a particular significance. Rather than allocating according to need or ability, it became seen as a question of passing or failing. This led to the exam becoming widely resented by some although strongly supported by others

As time went on, many policitians and educationalists felt that this system was not fair on the less academic children. For example they felt that local education authority funding was biased towards the grammar schools and so by the 1960's the then Labour Government decided to bring in a Comprehensive System of education. The idea was to abolish the three school system and introduce a more "comprehensive" system where all children were to be taught equally and would all attend the same type of secondary school. Children would no longer have to take the 11 Plus examination to see which secondary school they would go to. This meant that by the 1970's the number of Grammar Schools declined rapidly to be replaced by Comprehensives. The speed of this change varied from local authority to local authority as there was no set time limit for this process to happen. Some grammar schools elected to become private grammar schools, some changed to comprehensives and some remained as local authority grammar schools. The latter group are what we have in England today. In Scotland the system was somewhat different with Academy Schools being the main secondary school. In Wales all grammar schools were phased out by the end of the 1970's.

I began my period of education by entering the infant class of Welholme Road primary school in 1939. My subsequent path was through the four forms of the boys department to encounter the workings of the Butler Act in 1945. From there my future was to be determined by how well I did in the 11Plus tests. I actually came out on the border between the Grammar and Technical strands and to decide what would really benefit me I was subject to an oral examination held in the education office chaired by Grimsby's director of education. All I can remember is walking up the grand staircase in the Eleanor Street HQ and being asked to tell the board how I would make my way home.

Based on my face to face oral abilities it was decided that I would benefit from being in the grammar school stream so in September 1945, kitted out with a school uniform of badged blazer and cap, with a new bike, I cycled to the three miles Highfield to start on, what the director of education had described as, the Golden Road.