By Kemol King
There is an old Aesop fable about a fox who spots grapes hanging from a vine.
The fox wants them, but they are too high. He jumps repeatedly without success. Eventually, he gives up and walks away, comforting himself with the thought that the grapes were probably sour anyway.
The lesson has survived because the impulse is recognisable. When something is beyond our reach, sometimes it is easier to decide it was not worth having in the first place.
Every year when CSEC results are announced in Guyana, there is much of this.
A student earns 20 Grade Ones and someone asks what is the point. This year, a student earned an astonishing 26. Again comes the familiar argument: you do not need 20 subjects to enter university. Someone with six might sit in the same classroom, complete the same degree and ultimately get the same job.
The government now pays the examination fees for eight subjects for every student, which is greater than the five generally required for entry into the University of Guyana.
All of that may be true. It is also beside the point.
Nobody needs to run a marathon. Most of us can get from start to finish more efficiently by car. That does not make running 42 kilometres unimpressive.
Earning 26 Grade Ones is exceptional precisely because it is extraordinarily difficult. It requires retaining enormous amounts of material, juggling competing demands and performing at the highest level across more than two dozen examinations.
A high number of subjects can also have practical value. It exposes students to more disciplines, broadens their options and can strengthen applications for scholarships and other opportunities.
None of this means academic performance at 16 alone determines a person’s future.
Someone can struggle in school and later achieve excellence. We also tend to underestimate how much of a child’s performance is shaped by circumstances outside the classroom.
The home, first of all. Parental involvement, expectations, and the ways children are taught to think. A child may also be dealing with instability, trauma or other experiences that make concentration and academic performance more difficult. Another may have parents able to provide books, technology, paid lessons and a stable environment conducive to learning.
I’m not trying to assign blame, but we have to accept that a school’s success in teaching a student cannot be judged in isolation.
Some people who struggle academically as children flourish later because adulthood gives them greater control over their circumstances. They can find themselves in better environments, develop different habits, and use their greater agency to create opportunities that were unavailable to them at 8 or 12.
So you see, different academic performance during childhood doesn’t necessarily tell us who is more capable.
Nuance is also necessary when discussing Guyana’s top schools.
Students pursuing 15 or 20 CSEC subjects often take private lessons and prepare for subjects beyond what can be accommodated in their timetables and beyond what their schools teach. Their parents may invest heavily in that additional instruction. That is an advantage. But resources do not automatically produce 26 Grade Ones. The student still has to do the work.
Nor should the success of our top schools be reduced to the idea that they simply have everything while other schools have not.
I attended The Bishops’ High School, where much that improved our learning environment came from fundraising and alumni support. All classes held annual food sales that entirely derived products from parents’ donations. Alumni raised funds and donated equipment, including computers and books for the library. Some advantages associated with established schools have been built and maintained over generations by teachers, parents and alumni.
That can itself reproduce inequality. Schools with wealthier parents and strong alumni networks have advantages others may lack. Location compounds those differences. In hinterland and riverine communities especially, inadequate infrastructure and the difficulty reaching these areas can make it harder to provide children with the same resources available elsewhere. Hopefully, our oil wealth will help close these gaps, allowing us to build the infrastructure and learning environments that give children a fairer opportunity wherever they live. But resources are only part of why the country’s top schools repeatedly produce top results.
Guyana’s secondary school placement system concentrates the highest performing primary school graduates in a small group of ‘top’ schools. Whatever combination of aptitude, upbringing and socioeconomic circumstances produced their performance, these children had already demonstrated strong academic ability before entering secondary school.
Then they are placed together. Iron sharpens iron.
A child accustomed to being first in primary school suddenly encounters dozens capable of challenging them. Competition intensifies. Students learn from one another and become part of the learning environment themselves.
None of this means Guyana’s education system is equitable. A child’s opportunities should not be constrained by the school into which he or she is placed at 11. There are legitimate questions about differences in teachers, laboratories, libraries and home environments. But the reasons are multifaceted. And concern about inequity or children being left behind does not require diminishing those racing ahead.
If our argument is that many more Guyanese children could achieve exceptional results if afforded better opportunities, then we have already conceded that exceptional academic performance is something worth pursuing.
The answer to inequality is to give more children the opportunity to reach the grapes. It is not to declare them sour when someone does.
