Re: Universities and schools
@AC - "He later became a Professor of Maths."
This is the old fallacy of arguing from individual cases rather than statistics. There are some 600,000 little darlings entering the school system each year. If we are to run a generally successful policy at reasonable cost we have to consider the statistics.
Some 100,000 children will have an IQ greater than 115, and similar number an IQ of less than 85, in accordance with a near-Gaussian distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15. These are the bright and the weak streams I identified in my initial comment. The bright ones will, at school, in their careers, and as grumpy old pensioners, have the ability to abstract from the current facts to the underlying ideas. I saw that repeatedly in my work colleagues. They need the kind of schooling that develops that ability.
The present system is doing a disservice to the midstream children: it holds them back because it pretends that the weak ones can match the midstream. It also fails to give the weak ones an education that will bring them satisfaction and make them supportive citizens.
As other commenters have noted, some children needed to be reclassified at, say, 13+. The truth remains that the vast majority of children were correctly assigned by the 11+. Nowadays there is so much testing in schools that it should be straightforward to arrange transfers at 13+. Even in my marvellous new scheme there will be borderline cases who will need re-assessment in due course.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
