ABSTRACT
Before 1912 the so-called scholarship examination was conducted in a variety of subjects including English, Arithmetic, History, Geography and, sometimes, General Science. The Northumberland Mental Test, an intelligence test devised by Godfrey Thomson, was added to the grammar-school selection procedure and used, in addition to the traditional examination papers, in awarding a small number of free places in the county's grammar schools from 1921. Between the wars there was no such thing as an 'average practice' of Local Education Authorities in selecting children for grammar schools. Variations in selection procedures do indeed mean that some children who pass in one area might fail in another. But it would only be asking for further trouble to disregard local needs, and to try to impose some uniform procedure in all areas. People should freely admit that by no means all the critics of current objective procedures are obscurantist, or lacking in scientific attitude and skill.
