11 Year Olds and Writing

At our Writers Group last week we were presented with the unusual task of imagining ourselves as eleven year old children, sitting the SATS examination in English and to write a story in one hour.
We were given a sheet for planning the story; a long list of instructions about grammar and punctuation that should be used and another with details of the story to be written.
At first glance it seemed an onerous task for children, but somebody pointed out that eleven-year-olds had always been expected to reach this stage and she remembered learning all these things at her village school, which surprised some of the writers there.  However, I agreed with her.
Amongst the treasures at the back of my cupboard, I have an exercise book that I used when I was working towards the 11+ examination and hoping to win a place at the local Girls' Grammar school, so I rummaged in the back of that cupboard and unearthed the exercise book and sure enough, the English exercises were very similar to those required in today's SATS paper.
My writing was clear; the adjectives imaginative; the sentences rather formal but correct for that era and I'd learnt about punctuation. So really, little has changed.  And of course the 11+ was a very stressful examination taken in two parts with many children eliminated after the first one. Of those who progressed to the second, few reached the required standard.
The results were published in the Northern Echo on a specific date in August, often before the postman had delivered the official letter to the house, so imagine the nerve-racking search amongst the lists of names and the disappointment if yours was missing, but the triumph if it was there.
Mine was - the single success from my school that year.
I could look forward to bottle green uniforms; hockey sticks; violin lessons; latin and lots and lots of books. I would mix with girls travelling by bus from surrounding areas and those coming by train from Barnard Castle and even Middleton-in-Teesdale. During one extreme winter those girls still arrived and we were all given cups of hot cocoa, spoilt by the skin on the top of it. We ate our lunch at tables on the balcony overlooking the hall; that big space with a stage where the Headmistress stood in her black gown to address us all in Assemblies. At other times the hall was transformed into a gymnasium with punishing ropes that we were meant to climb and parrallell bars as well as wall bars - not my favourite lesson! The school was a new world and seemed so big to me at eleven, but at a re-union last year I saw that it was really quite small and compact compared to the huge Comprehensive scools that have developed now.
I realise how hard I must have worked and how fortunate I was to pass that 11+ examination that opened the doors to a whole new life.
Good luck to all the 11 year olds who will sit that SATS examination in a few weeks time.