Grammar schools are moving their 11-Plus exams from September to July to save pupils a nervous summer of cramming.
Eight schools have adopted the move so far, with more expected to follow if successful.
As well as preserving children’s summer holidays, it is also aimed at helping poorer families who cannot pay for intensive tutoring over the break.
In addition, heads said bringing the exams forward will tackle summer learning loss, where children lose some of their skills during the six-weeks away from school.
Historically, grammar schools have held their entrance tests for Year 7 at the start of Year 6, the final year of primary school.
However, for the first time, Reading School, a state grammar school for boys in Berkshire, will hold its test for the September 2027 intake in July this year – at the end of Year 5.
Meanwhile, seven grammars in Gloucestershire, where pupils sit one test which covers all the schools, will also move theirs to the summer, starting next year.
James Richardson, the head teacher of Pate’s Grammar School, in Cheltenham, said: ‘Moving the 11-Plus test to the end of the summer term of Year 5 means every child will be in that groove of learning. You get your 11-Plus done and out of the way and then you can have a summer holiday like all ten-year-olds should have.’
Grammar schools are moving their 11-Plus exams from September to July to save pupils a nervous summer of cramming (file picture)
Pate’s is one of the most successful schools in the country, sending 13 students to Cambridge last year and 12 to Oxford.
Chris Evans, the head teacher at the Reading School, which was founded in 1125, said they were ‘happy to be the guinea pig’ for a July test and he hoped more would then follow.
He told the Sunday Times: ‘If you’ve got a home without much literacy and access to resources, then you’re going to find that, in August, you don’t sustain your vocabulary. You don’t carry on learning and growing in the same way as a child who’s being taken to the library to get books out all the time.’
It comes after a study of US primary children published in 2020 found on average over a three-month summer break, they lost between 17 per cent and 28 per cent of the English knowledge they gained in the previous nine months.
For maths, they lost 25 per cent to 34 per cent of the knowledge they had learned.
The Gloucestershire schools have appointed a test provider, run by Reading School, to ‘tutor-proof’ their 11-plus exam.
Reading has an 11-plus test offshoot called Future Stories Community Enterprise, which runs an exam based only on national curriculum content.
This is in contrast with most grammars, which test skills such as verbal and non-verbal reasoning.
Mr Evans said: ‘We suspect over time there will be a gradual move to test in July once the data shows that children still flourish.’
