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Bede School Examinations
To get to the school, when it was initially a Collegiate School, and then a Grammar School, you
had to take a Qualifying Examination, popularly known as the 11+ Examination. There was no pass mark,
it was simply a means of selecting those pupils who were thought might benefit from a secondary education.
Those pupils who performed best were offered places in either the Boys or Girls School.
Those who missed out were offered places at West Park Collegiate School,
while in later years, boys were able to attend the Junior Technical School.
Some sample papers are available below.
The 11+ Examination
There was a surprising similarity in the format of the questions over the period where the examination was used for the selection of pupils
for Bede Grammar School. In particular, the last question was usually about a rectangle placed symetrically within another one.
Coaching for the examination was not unusual, particularly at schools which had more than one class of pupils at both Junior levels. Pupils considered
to have the potential to pass were streamed into a special 11+ class, and coached for both the Maths and English papers. High Barnes was one school that
practised this, and it would be interesting to find which other schools did the same.
The majority of pupils will have left when they were sixteen, after taking a leaving cerfificate examination. One such examination was
the Oxford School Leaving Certificate. Samples of some papers can be seen below.
If you stayed on, and took A-Levels, the samples listed below may well jog your memory.
Should you have any examination papers at any level, copies, or a loan of the papers, would be appreciated.
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