Sounds like china's gaokao? It might be mericratic, but it's also very high stakes and just leads to your entire high school being devoted to test cramming.
It can be high stakes exams, the admit ion grade is 75% the grade of the national exam. For addition in high school there is always a possibility of transfers if you maybe had a super bad day and got a low grade , for university you can wait 1 year and try again.
> and just leads to your entire high school being devoted to test cramming.
This is a better measure on how competent you are then some lottery or interview.
To prepare for tests like mathematics implies you actually need to learn and solve problems, it is not an exam that measures your instincts or if you are gifted.
I am from Romania btw, and when IO was a child there was no national exam, I had to chose 1 highschool then go there and take an exam with the other kids that chose the same highschool , if I overestimated my abilities then I would have been screwed for at least 1 semester or year.
In present with a national exams the kids have it much better
- it is clear exactly what areas are covered by the exam so you can ignore stuff that is not needed
- models of subject exams are published and you can try and evaluate your level
- you can check the previous years subjects, grades, admision numbers and you can have a good idea what grade you need to get at your proffered high school.
Also as I mentioned high schools here are specialized, so you have 2 that are specialized in math, physics ad informatics , 1 that is art , 1 focused on economics, 1 focused in pedagogy,literature and languages , 1 focused in chemistry and we have professional school that are for kids that hate books and just want a job, here they can learn to be a car mechanic, construction, cooks etc. So you could not randomly distribute children around and ignore their preferences, you could put a child that hates math in the math highscool and a child that hates art in the art school.
> So you could not randomly distribute children around and ignore their preferences
I believe SJ activists care only about class conflict and don't have any respect for individual choice. Like feminists criticising women who choose to be housewives. They know what's better for everyone.
