Britain has already tried reading a child's future off a form
Ministers want primary schools in England to pick out the children most likely to end up out of work.
Crossbencher · 08 August 2026
Ministers want primary schools in England to pick out the children most likely to end up out of work. It was reported this week as early help. What it does is make a forecast about a child, and forecasts about children have a way of arranging their own proof.
We know that because Britain ran the experiment already. The break at eleven, the one that still decides when a child changes school, came out of a report of 1926 which said education should divide on the cusp of adolescence. The eleven-plus grew out of the changes to English and Welsh schooling in the years up to 1944, and it rested on an honest belief: that a test could find the strand a child was suited to and send them to the school that fitted. Nobody set out to do harm. That's worth saying plainly, because nobody is setting out to do harm now either.
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Britain has already tried reading a child's future off a form · Crossbencher