The Big Read: Animal farm rules, not OK

It is still my favourite education cartoon of all time.

Somewhere in the bush a suited teacher behind a desk addresses a row of pupils: "For a fair selection everybody has to take the same exam: Please climb that tree." The problem is that the "pupils" include a monkey, an elephant, a fish in a bowl of water, a dog etc. There should be no need for further explanation but I find that when a privileged parent comes to complain about their child not being selected for medical school or architecture or physiotherapy, two things happen.

First, they find the cartoon funny, even embarrassing, for its message is incontestable - not all students start examinations equally because some are, by design, advantaged. Then, as if the cartoon no longer exists, the familiar arguments kick in, such as "my child worked very hard" or "you cannot blame the children for the past" or "can't we just move on and leave apartheid behind us?".

I thought of the cartoon reflecting on our annual ritual called the National Senior Certificate examinations, the "matric exams" in the old language. Thousands of Grade 12 pupils are coming to the close of one of the single most important tests of their lives. Most will fall below the 50% mark in the gateway subjects, and those who pass will for the most part be the monkeys in the cartoon - they come from advantaged schools at which the ability to climb the tree, so to speak, is determined by race or the ability to pay. Those pupils from top schools with qualified teachers, abundant resources and predictable timetables will scale the tree with ease. The majority will find it hard to get off the ground, to stretch the tree-climbing analogy.

It does not surprise me at all, therefore, that once again there have been people who have tried to circumvent the rules by stealing and leaking one or more matric papers. Such dishonesty happens in any system in which, on the one hand, the rules are inherently unfair and, on the other, the stakes are incredibly high.

This is not a defence of officials in Limpopo who stole exam papers; it is an explanation of why ordinary people take the kind of risks that could send them to prison.

What is to be done? We clearly need measures of pupil readiness for entry to university or the work place, or life itself. Tests and examinations therefore have their place. But what we do in our country is to lower the tree into the ground so that the elephant can cross and the dog can jump over. That is not how you deal with historical unfairness.

By the way, bias apart, we take the same short cuts in rugby selections, senior appointments in parastatals, and yes, professorial promotions.

What we should be doing - and here the analogy breaks down - is to prepare all youngsters to scale the tree by reconstructing the school system from the ground up so that it becomes fair over time for all children.

For that to happen you need a government that accepts that little has been done to improve the chances of all pupils to compete equally in examinations. That sense of the crisis does not exist, which leaves us with a terrible dilemma - as far as I can see into the future we will continue to try and resolve the problem of inequality and unfairness at the wrong end of the pipeline. That is, by making special concessions at the end of the school cycle for those harmed by an unequal education system that still remains unconstructed.

The result? Resentment will continue to grow among those who seek fairness and equal treatment in what is supposed to be a non-racial democracy. And millions of disadvantaged young people who are perfectly capable of doing as well, or better, than their privileged counterparts will remain hamstrung by a system that makes them suspect when it comes to competing in the education marketplace.

Some of the very top students at our leading universities today come from schools like Menzi High in Umlazi, Durban, and South Peninsula High in Diepriver, Cape Town. Individual schools under great leadership overcome their historical disadvantage by taking on, rather than diminishing, that formidable tree of academic accomplishment. It will, however, require more than devoted and competent leaders of individual schools to change the more than 20000 disadvantaged places of learning in the country. Systemic change requires nothing less than governmental leadership.