Are you an 11 plus or a minus?

The English was definitely the easiest. I think it was far easier than our current one, since the comprehension was quite short and the creative writing didn’t need a story, just a conversation and an advertisement.

I think, as a whole, I would prefer doing the 1950s exam, mostly because it is so much shorter. Two of the three were only about 30-35 minutes, which makes it far less stressful, and though the maths took an hour, there were only about three sheets to do.



JACK SHEPHERD

Norfolk House school (independent) Marks: Maths: 10/18: English: 98 per cent; General: 33/40

THE 11-plus exam was the hardest maths test I have ever sat — mainly because I’m not used to old money like halfpennies and shillings and old-fashioned weights and measures. It was like a different language to me.

I thought that this exam was harder than the SATs and the entrance examination that I passed in order to get into my new independent school, Aldenham School. In the old days they had a different way of taking exams. The questions were phrased differently; they seemed more complicated and more difficult to understand. Sometimes it took a while to be sure what the questioner was asking me to do. I found most of the questions quite hard, but a few of them were easy.

One of my friends, Joseph, who will be going to the same school as me after the summer holidays, looked at the maths paper after I had finished my exam to see if it was hard. He found half of them very hard. He decided that he would rather not sit the exam, even in fun. And he is very good at maths.

I thought that the English and general papers were quite easy; they were certainly not harder than the maths exam, although there were a few questions that I did not understand straight away.

Joe and I agree that we would prefer to be taking exams today rather than 50 years ago.

CIERAN QUINN

St Francesca Cabrini (state school)

Marks: Maths: 13/18; English: 94 per cent; General: 30/40



I FOUND the 1950s maths paper quite hard; harder than the SAT papers that I am used to taking. Although we had a conversion table, I only looked at it once, and I really don’t understand shillings. I think that it was the units of measurement themselves that I found difficult to work with, and not the wording of the questions.

I am not used to the language of the 1950s paper, and couldn’t understand it as clearly as today’s, but it wasn’t too hard to follow. The maths problems were made more difficult because I had to convert everything first, and normally I don’t need to do that. If the paper I sat yesterday had asked the same questions but used metres, centimetres and litres rather than feet, inches and pints then it might have been easier than the SATs.

My twin sister Siobhan took the English paper at the same time as I did the maths one, and she found it a lot harder than the ones we usually do too. She said that the language was more difficult for her to understand, and she doesn’t think she did very well.

I wanted to take a calculator into my exam but I wasn’t allowed to. The 1950s children had to work things out in their heads a lot more than we do. I feel sorry for them because their exams were so much harder than ours are today.

THE PROFESSOR

WHEN YOU TAKE the mathematics tests to which pupils in the 1950s were subjected, you get an insight into the mentality with which mathematics was taught in those days: multiplication tables and loads of boring arithmetic.

It is like learning a musical instrument when all you are allowed to play or listen to are scales and arpeggios. Who would want to learn a musical instrument if this was all they thought music was about? It is no wonder that when I say I am a research mathematician people think that I must be doing long division to a lot of decimal places.

Today, mathematical education is trying to play pupils some of the great mathematical music that they will be able to experience if only they can master the arithmetic of the classroom. There is no getting round having to learn some of the technical and formal side of the language of mathematics, but it is also possible to excite students about what lies beyond. The 1960s saw not only political revolution but also mathematical educational reform.

I took my O-level mathematics in 1980 and was brought up on something called the School Mathematics Project (SMP), a product of this 1960s revolution. It opened my eyes to the fascinating world of symmetry, to the delights of prime numbers and even to the modern world of topology or bendy geometry. It was one of the catalysts for my wanting to become a mathematician.

I was always taught as a musician to “play the wrong note in the right place”. I believe that the same principle applies to teaching mathematics. We should encourage students first of all to appreciate structure and pattern. This, rather than the ability to do long division precisely, is what I am looking for when I interview students for entrance to Oxford. Technical errors of arithmetic can be deadly (the Hubble Telescope needed a pair of glasses because of a silly arithmetical mistake), but mathematical education has moved away from the obsessive addiction to technical arithmetic performance and is seeking to balance that by exciting students about what mathematics is really about.

We should be thankful that we have moved on from the tedium of the 1950s mathematical classroom.

Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford

Professor du Sautoy’s book, The Music of the Primes, is published this week by Fourth Estate (£18.99)