NZ School System

I have been meaning to post the contrast between USA education system and the New  Zealand education system, but I wanted to get a good picture of how things worked before I wrote anything.  Here we go...

One of the best innovations in the NZ (New Zealand) school system is what is called interval.  Interval is like recess for high schoolers!  During the middle of the morning there is a half hour break for the students and the teachers.  The students eat junk food and horse around while the teachers get coffee and tea (well I am stuffing my face as well with my running my metabolism is crazy).
The rest of the system is pretty bazaar in my thoughts, with the idea of learning and students in mind.  There is no percentage grading.  The grading goes by three standards Achieved, Merit, Excellent.   These are achieved by getting a certain amount of problems right for each category. What is strange is that there is no differentiation between some one who barley makes the category and some one who aces the test.  For exampled a quiz with 10 problems on it, to get an Excellent a student must get 7/10 correct, a student who scores a 7/10 gets the same mark a student who gets 10/10.
The next strange thing in the education system is that there is no such thing as failing a grade.  If a student doesn't pass a year they....move on to the next year...  I don't understand the rational behind this, supposedly it is more detrimental to the student to hold them back and have a discontented social experience than actually learning the level they are at.  Can you imagine how difficult this makes teaching students here?  If a student doesn't pass a year how are they supposed to pass the next year...!!  When did this country decide the social aspect was more important than learning I do not know.  Mind you all I am not saying this to put the country down or run down the education system, it is just as an educator myself it is hard to see this.  
The last major thing that I have noticed was that all the students are grouped into their years by their abilities.  Well of course me being the new American I am going to be given the class tagged 10B1.  This means that of all the students of year 10, which is akin to our freshman every problem student is stuffed into one class.  This segregation goes all the way up to "extension" classes.  These are the brightest and best the year has to offer.  How crazy is this every student in each separate section believes they are where they are.  The bottom only achieves what is expected of the bottom because that is where the school and society has put them.  This is so frustrating, where is the achievement and pride of work?!  Anyways these are the most major things that I have noticed so far, but I still have three and a half more months so I will keep an eye out for other things so you all can get a good picture of NZ.  Tomorrow I have the day off as the teachers are going on strike...what to do..  There is an Alaskan woman that teaches at the school whom offered me some time at their ranch to ride some of their horses.  Then in the afternoon my host family is going to take me to shoot some skeet.  We shall see how well I do at this for I haven't a lot of experience in shooting skeet.  I did how ever kick major butt when we went shooting rabbits!  I didn't miss a shot and all were in the head.  Well I will keep you all posted if I keep talking about what I'm going to do I won't have anything to post later.  Take care and have a good week!  Cheers