Okay so I can’t remember if this has been brought up recently or not so excuse me if it has

I’ve been thinking about the British education system. As pretty much everyone here is American, I’m going to have to explain a fair bit. In the UK we do not have an overall education qualification, we have individual subjects and results in those subjects that (until this year) are based on G to A* grades. The goal is to get five C or above grade GCSEs. Recent years has seen a decline in coursework based assessments (which often provide a part of the overall qualification, usually in addition to other coursework or exams), as well as BTEC qualifications (more vocational instead of academically based qualifications) becoming next to non existent. So my question is, is having standardised exams composing all these qualifications beneficial (you have a measure to compare, it’s standardised throughout the country, it’s easier for external examiners to mark), or is it more detrimental (students have a range of abilities they can’t show, it’s a very narrow area for talent, there’s loads of pressure on what is usually two exams at the end of a year - which is combined with all the other subjects you’re doing which could mean 24 exams)? Is it ethical for such qualifications to be so narrowly focused or is it discriminatory for those whose talents lie elsewhere, such as with more manual areas, or people who do better with things like group work and presentations?