Always interesting to revisit the idea of the theoretical role “education” plays in society. One might view the primary objective of school as a sorting machine or one that imparts knowledge for its own sake. These two things aren’t specifically mutually exclusive, but you can have only one “primary objective”.

Only having experience within the US myself, I have always found the idea of “forced ranking” for grades a little odd. Though admittedly, I do skew towards being (perhaps a bit too) idealistic in that sense.