Learning to Live

In an intelligence test we take a sample of an individual's ability to solve puzzles and problems of various kinds, and if we have taken a representative sample it will allow us to predict successfully the level of performance he will reach in a wide variety of occupations

.  This became of particular importance when, as a result of the 1944 Education Act, secondary schooling for all became law, and grammar schools, with the exception of a small number of independent foundation schools, became available to the whole population. Since the number of grammar schools in the countrycould accommodate at most approximately 25 per cent of the total child population of eleven-plus, some kind of selection had to be made. Narrowly academic examinations and tests were felt, quite rightly, to be heavily weighted in favour of children who had had the advantage of highly-academic primary schools and academically biased homes. Intelligence tests were devised to counteract this narrow specialization, by introducing problems which were not based on specifically scholastically-acquired knowledge. The intelligence test is an attempt to assess the general ability of any child to think, reason, judge, analyse and syntiesize by presenting him with situations, both verbal and practical, which arewithin his range of competence and understanding.