Intelligence Tests, Social Class and Selection for Secondary Schools

Abstract

tN I953, the Hertfordshire Education Authority abandoned the use | of intelligence tests in selecting children for admission to grammar Xscilools. An inquiry into social factors in educational selection was already under way in the Soutll-Western Educational Division of the Countyl and with the co-operation of the Divisional Education Officer and the Heads of secondary schools, certain additional information was collected to enable the eflect of this measure on the social distribution of opportunity of entering grammar schools to be examined. In the inter-war years the use of intelligence tests was uridely regarded as a guarantee of the objectivity of the selection procedure; the results of the tests were held to be as nearly as possible free of bias from environmental influences, so that by giving them an important place in tlle selection procedure, social discrimination in the award of grammar school places could be reduced to a minimum. More recently, the reputation of the tests as an objective and administratively convenient instrument for the diagnosis of potential educability has been seriously undermined and the Hertfordsllire example in abandoning them was widely welcomed and has since been followed by other Authorities. The campaign against the tests has been strongly supported, if not actually led, by egalitarian reformers in education, and although, admittedly, the case against them does not rest wholly on the demonstration of environmental influences biasing their results against children from working-class homes, it is relevant to the discussion, and of some interest, to see how in fact the use of intelligence tests in selection affects the social distribution of grammar school places. The follo^sring analysis relates to the cohort of boys entering secondary sckools in the Educational Division of South-West Hertfordshire in I952, I953 and I954. The occupations followed by t}le fathers of boys entering in 1952 were obtained by interview with their parents as part of the wider inquiry already referred to, and in the same connection the authority l;indly supplied the I.Q. of the boys based on their performance 33