I.Q. i z5 Plus

By C. H. LEWIS

FEW people think about examinations unless they are compelled to, and if reminded of them remember only a distant summer term overshadowed by School Certificate or Tripos. June and July are traditionally the months dreaded by candidates (and examiners), but in fact examinations far more important take place in the first three months of each year. They are more important because so many lives are affected by their results ; almost every boy and girl of eleven takes the secondary-school selection test in the spring term, and success may lead to a grammar school and perhaps entry to a profession or a university, while failure may close the door for ever.

Conscious of their responsibilities and overwhelmed by the numbers to be dealt with, education authorities have almost all adopted an examination system that is now in need of revision. It was devised when the only secondary schools were the grammar schools, and when all ambitious parents therefore insisted that their children should attempt the grammar-school entrance test. Although the teachers know that at least seventy-five per cent. of the children have no chance of passing, and would be miserably unhappy if they did, all children take the examination in order that justice may be seen to be done. Consequently for a grammar school with sixty vacant places there are each year about 400 candidates ; in London this month over 34,000 children are taking the tests. It is not surprising that the examination of such vast numbers resembles the checking of articles leaving a factory rather than the assessment of human beings.

A child taking the examination will usually be faced first with an intelligence test for which he has had (or should have had) no preparation. Every question can be answered by underlining a word or filling a blank space ; it is not necessary to write a complete sentence. " Cow is to calf as mare is to (horse, sheep, foal, bull)." " How old is John if he is two years older than James who was born when Thomas, who is now 21, was thirteen ? " " Down question the number write this of." " Underline two opposites in this group of words: lie, kneel, swim, stand, feed." Through a mass of such questions he must hurry, for speed is considered essential and the paper is strictly timed to the nearest second. Half a minute more or less does not matter in a university examination, but it might make three or four marks' difference in this intelligence test.

Three or four marks matter very much. The educationist who designed the intelligence test has also produced a table of marks that should be obtained by children of ten years, ten years one month, ten years two months, and so on. This he bases on previous experiments, and although we may doubt the validity in common sense of the theory that a child of eleven years ought to get two marks more than one who is a month younger, we shall be wise not to argue lest we are asphyxiated by a cloud of statistics. Those who accept the theory can discoirer from the table what age a child's actual marks represent ; this is his " mental age." With this it is possible to make a direct comparison between children even when one is nearly twelve months older than another.

This is done by working out each child's intelligence quotient, the relationship between his mental age and his actual age. Thus a child whose mental age is found to be 156 months when his actual age is 130 months has an intelligence quotient of 156 divided by 130 ; when reduced (and multiplied by 100 to avoid awkward fractions) this gives 120. A child whose mental age is the same as his actual age has an I.Q. of 100, thus proving himself to be that extraordinary phenomenon, the average child.

After the intelligence test has measured the child's capacity he must show his attainments in arithmetic and English. The arithmetic paper probably has the sums fully set out, so that he has only to enter the answers ; good marks are earned by simple numerical skill and knowledge of rules and tables—and speed, for each section is carefully timed. Similar methods are used, with less justification, in the English paper. A composition is notoriously hard to mark, because different examiners have different standards ; this would invalidate the test, so composition is usually omitted.

Comprehension may be tested by printing a short piece of verse or prose and then asking questions about it ; sentence construction by asking the candidate to fill the blanks in incomplete sentences.

The chief advantage of these standardised papers is that they can be marked rapidly and objectively. They are in fact usually marked by people who have never seen them before, and who follow blindly the instructions of the designer, living for a short time in a world quite strange to a schoolmaster because everything in it is either exactly right or completely wrong. The weakness is that, in an effort to be quite fair, the educationists concentrate on certain qualities not because they are necessarily the most important but because they can be easily assessed.

The rest of the procedure varies. Some authorities require children who have survived the first round to try another intelligence test ; others an English composition (surely right, despite marking difficulties). But the basic fact remains that the preliminary selec- tion depends on the intelligence test, and to have a chance at all a child must have obtained an intelligence quotient of at least 115 (in educational jargon an I.Q. of 115 plus). If Arnold Bennett's " Card " were at school today he would start his career not by altering the marks in an examination but by faking his I.Q If indeed he had need to fake it! Perhaps the sharp qualities he displayed are just those which would produce excellent results

in a grammar-school selection test—quickness of uptake, but not perseverance (" If you cannot do a question do not waste time on it, pass on to the next ") ; verbal ingenuity, but not originality or

imagination. The late developer, the steady plodder, the boy with artistic but not arithmetical ability, may all fail, while the quicker boy, though perhaps temperamentally unsuited for academic work. succeeds.

Criticising intelligence tests is of course easy, and har recently become an established sport at schoolmasters' conferences. Some good has resulted ; the more extravagant claims of the I.Q.'s infallibility have been modified, and many authorities admit that some children may slip through the net at eleven and must be given a second chance at thirteen. But the whole system will shortly be quite out of date, for when " secondary education for all " really exists, when modern and technical schools take their places beside the grammar schools, we shall certainly not be able to allocate the children to them on the results of this examination. Boys who wish to go to technical schools, for instance, will have to show their

practical ability, and there is no reason why a boy with this ability should not go to a technical school even although he could also qualify for the grammar school. We must send the boy to the school which will suit him best, and not assume that the grammar school always has the first choice.

It will not be necessary for all children to take the selection tests. The primary-school teachers should select the candidates for admis- sion to grammar and technical schools, allowing for children's temperaments as well as for their brains, and consulting the wishes of their parents. The heads of the secondary schools should arrange their own entrance examinations ; instead of 400 candidates for sixty places 1 visualise not more than 120, and if the headmasters cannot be trusted to examine, interview and select their pupils, I do not know why they have been appointed headmasters.

But all this depends on two factors—first, establishing the prestige of technical and modern schools so that they rank in the public mind with the grammar schools ; and, second, convincing the parents that the teachers' recommendations are just. At present we can always blame a child's failure to enter a grammar school on his I.Q., for which no one is responsible (except perhaps his parents, through heredity). In future we ought ourselves to accept responsibility for these decisions, and although we shall make mistakes I shall still prefer this method to that of the I.Q. and the speed-test.