Merit never arrives alone

In Quebec, universities use the collegial performance score, the R score, mainly to choose who gets into their limited-enrolment programs. According to the Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire, each CEGEP grade first becomes a Z score, which places the student relative to the average of their group. Since the fall of 2017, this score has been adjusted using two indicators drawn from the results that students in the same group obtained in Secondary 4 and 5, in subjects with ministry exams: the group's strength and its spread. The goal is fairness: a student surrounded by very strong classmates is not penalized.

The tool is rigorous, but it measures a rank, not the road travelled. And the adjustment itself relies on high school results: earlier paths continue to count.

These paths are shaped early. In the United States, people speak of the "school-to-prison pipeline" to describe how repeated school exclusions push some young people away from school and closer to the justice system. In Canada, the report Towards Race Equity in Education, led in 2017 by Professor Carl James of York University, shows that in Toronto-area schools, 42% of Black students had been suspended at least once before finishing high school, compared with 18% of white students. They were also more than twice as likely to be streamed into the applied rather than the academic program.

Ubuntu does not deny each person's effort. It reminds us that no one succeeds alone: behind every score there are parents, teachers, a neighbourhood. A school that looks for potential before faults gives everyone the same chance to be carried.