While waiting to enter examination halls at scores of venues across South Africa many Unisa students may have wondered, “Why do we always have to write these exams? Could somebody not think of a different way of testing the knowledge and insights I have gained during the year?”
This system of written examinations originated in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution of the mid-1800s. Before this time men, and indeed no women, who wished to work in the British civil service relied not on being suitably qualified to do the job, but on patronage and knowing influential people to gain entry into government service. By the 1850s a new body, the University of London, was formed to introduce and administer written examinations to future civil servants. Written examinations rather than ‘oral disputations’ as students at universities such as Oxford and Cambridge were subjected to, was deemed to be a more objective and equitable way in which to measure the knowledge of prospective government employees.
The Cape Colony, then an integral part of the British Empire, soon followed suit with the formation of a Board of Examiners of Candidates for Government Services to examine all civil service applicants. This Board of Examiners had thoroughly modern concerns, as they required candidates to have a sound knowledge not only of the Classics but also of Mathematics and Elements of Physical Science to be able to sit for the local public service examinations. The renamed Board of Public Examiners in Literature and Science also offered a first class and second class certificate and later a third class certificate, not unlike the former matriculation certificate. For the majority of students this third class certificate was the pinnacle of their academic achievement. Although The Board also ambitiously incorporated law, civil engineering, land surveying and navigation into its programme, only two candidates in South Africa ever sat for the civil engineering and none for the navigation examinations.
Until 1900, in South Africa, as was the case in Great Britain, end of year examinations were held in June of each year. However, with the outbreak of the Anglo Boer South African War (1899-1902), the university decided to postpone examinations until the end of that year to enable students to make up for lost study time. In time the dates of these second series of examinations became the accepted norm and November became synonymous with examinations at Unisa and elsewhere in South Africa.
