The Holcombe Study Suite of Chatham Grammar School for Boys, opened in February 2003. Wikicommons/Gary Kirk. Some rights reserved.I come from Kent, one of the few places in the United Kingdom to have retained the grammar-state school divide. At the age of 11, just as Year 6 starts, all kids are made to undertake a series of tests to divide them based upon their ‘knowledge’. I was lucky that I passed this test. I now attend the University of Birmingham, yet if I’d have failed that test it could have been enormously different.
Passing the test was not guaranteed in any sense of the word. I needed a tutor from the start of Year 5 in order to come close to passing and when I actually took the exam the result was very much up in the air. Time was on my side though, back then the test was taken later in the year. Had it occurred early on in Year 6 like it does now I never would have passed: my tutor and teachers told me as much. That is one reason why I oppose grammar schools, because the margins between passing and failing can be so fine.
