IN Buckinghamshire, we select children for secondary education by tests taken at the age of 11. These tests measure the level of a child’s innate ability to process information, to ‘reason’.

Those whose ability is appropriate to what might be termed a more academic pace are selected to attend one of our grammar schools; those who would not thrive in that sector attend one of our upper schools.

If we were designing a system from scratch, it is arguable that we might not come up with this one; however, it is what we have and we are blessed in Wycombe with excellent schools of both types.

Two of my children attended a local Grammar School and two an Upper School.

Their results at GCSE and A Levels were very similar.

They all achieved their potential, but at a different pace.

If, like some parents, who insist on using the words ‘pass’ and’ fail” to describe the results of the selection process, I had sent my daughters for 11+ coaching, they might all perhaps have squeezed into a grammar school.

They might then have struggled for seven years to keep up with contemporaries able to work at a faster pace.

Many middle class parents still have this obsession with demonstrating that they have clever kids to go with their nice houses and their smart cars.

They complain (usually at the school gate to each other), if they consider that a school’s 11+ ‘success rate’ is poor.

I know of at least one parent who recently complained that a school’s 11+ results should be better – for the simple reason that it was ‘a middle class school’.

This is no different to believing that because you are middle class your child should be able to run faster than a working class child.

And to promise rewards to a child if it ‘passes’ – (the dreaded ‘P’ word) to try to nudge a child up those few extra points only to struggle at a grammar school – is, I believe, no less than to cruelty.

All schools are supposed to allocate a similar amount of time to familiarise children with the 11+ procedure – and if it were left at that, then the selection process would work to its best potential.

But however many times some parents are told what the 11+ measures and its purpose – they still seem incapable of understanding.