Comment by ajsnigrutin

In what was in my time yugoslavia and isn't anymore, we had a similar system and it worked great.

From the austria-hungary time, the primary school (8 years, ~6/7 to 14/15yo, now 9 years, where preschool became year 1) was mandatory, and after that it was your decision what to do next.

You could then go to a "general high school" (gymnasium) for the next 4 years, and some of them were better than others (mostly because of students, but teachers too), and you had to collect enough points from grades and standardized testing in primary school to be accepted there. All the illiterate idiots didn't have enough points to get accepted, so you'd be in a nice class with comparable peers and teachers could teach new stuff instead of repeat the stuff the students should already know. The classes were "general" (math, languages, history, geography, etc.) and the idea was to prepare you for college.

The less-smart students went either to "not that good" gymnasiums or to other highschools, like the one for electricians or construction workers, farmers, etc., where they would get the legally required education to later eg. become an electrician or something after 3 years or 4, without the need for college or extra schooling and with the reduced amount of "general" subjects (only 1 or two years of history instead of 4, etc.).

The system somehow worked and still does.