Yeah this is something I thought about quite hard before I moved countries. I didn't want my kid to be at the mercy of some teacher who might not like him.

So then I ended up where we have this one time test, which stresses the hell out of everyone. Luckily he did well on it, school decisions came out last week and he got what he wanted.

I'm not actually sure which is better, part of why I thought maybe teacher recommendations would have been better was that my kid would undoubtedly get recommended if that were the system, he just happens to have that thing that teachers recognise. But even so he could have had a bad day and not made it in the system we actually live in.