Friday was the day that local governments posted lists of suicide hot lines, the police issued stern warnings against drunken revelry and newspapers across South Africa, big and small, published endless pages of names and numbers in eye-straining type.
It was, in short, the day that South Africa released the results of its annual matric (matriculation) examinations, the yardstick that measures not only whether 12th graders will graduate, but where they will go in South African society. And while South Africa has a surfeit of holidays -- days of reconciliation and good will; days for women and youth; days for workers, freedom and human rights -- none of them summon anything near the passion of the scores' unveiling, when much of the country comes to a halt.
That is perhaps for good reason: The students who fail are largely destined for menial jobs. A simple passing score is a ticket into the blue-collar work force, but not to more prestigious jobs. Only the relative handful who earn so-called endorsements, signifying higher scores on a battery of tougher tests, receive the go-ahead to attend a four-year university.
That message is drilled into students from primary school onward. High-school seniors' graduating year is a mixture of bittersweet partings and punishing tests, crafted to gird young minds for the all-important finals at year's end.
"The rest of your life changes are dependent on what happens in this exit exam," Vijay Reddy, an education expert, said in a telephone interview.
"It's the be-all and end-all, in terms of people's future," said Anil Kanjee, who heads the National Education Quality Initiative at South Africa's Human Sciences Research Council, a government-sponsored research organization.
It is possible to exaggerate, of course: Some who fail the matrics go on to full and lucrative careers. Laggards can also try to boost a low score by taking a second test later. But for many of the 600,000 teens who took the matric exams last month and got their scores on Friday, the tests were nothing less than a rite of passage.
The unveiling of the test scores, with newspaper profiles of top achievers and merciless exposure of underachievers in gray columns of print, is a national event.
The education minister's pronouncement on the results makes banner headlines.
The pass rate, at 65.2 percent this year, is down about a percentage point from last year and further from the 73.3 percent in 2003.
The African National Congress, South Africa's ruling party, on Friday called that drop a matter of deep concern, and the education minister, Naledi Pandor, pledged a dragnet to expose schools that "have begun to decline into complacency and mediocracy."
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