[koonsolo]

At least in Belgium, at 12, kids get divided into different schools and systems. You can go into trades, which expects you to be ready at 18 to go work as a plumber, electrician, mechanic, secretary, cook, etc. Or you go towards higher education and so get more focus on math and/or languages. At 18 you are expected to not be ready for the job market but study further.

For my own kids, you really see the differences at 11 to become more profound in their classroom, where some are running behind while others excel. So I saw that 12 is indeed the age where a split is necessary.

You don't have that?

Edit: After some Wikipeding, I see you really don't have that. Wow, that is crazy in my opinion. I have no clue how you could ever organize those differences among students. Here is the system of Belgium: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Belgium.

For example my daughter is 12 and she is in a class "STEM and moderns languages". Very focussed on programming, science, math, and they also get Dutch, French and English. Some of her classmates at the end of the schooyear had to switch because their grades weren't good enough.

So in Belgium, there are even different schools for different tracks.

[lurker919]

That sounds so dystopian. What do kids even do at 12? How can you ask them to decide the course of their life at 12, generally they get segregated while choosing an undergrad major around 16 right!

[koonsolo]

At 12, there are already big differences among them.

Let's divide it into kids that like to learn vs kids that like to work with their hands. The 2nd group would learn how to work with metal, wood, .... Way more practical stuff, very little theory. The other group is the reverse of course.

At 16, some kids are really tired of sitting in a classroom. For example plumber track would have these 16 year olds already doing an internship with real plumbers. At 18 they can start their own company already.

It's also no secret that a 16 year old in Belgium learns math that in US you would only see at higher education.

I think it works great, and what I saw with my 2 oldest is that last year when they are all still together at age 11, the learning differences really start to show. It's neither fun for the smart ones nor for the slower ones.