I don't think thats entirely true about the class avg. thing for secondary schools or Poly in my experience. Sure, you might get into the 'best' class in sec 3 but you still can flunk that year and end up in the same class for the next year like the rest.
It's true for
my school at least. (I'm taking International Baccalaureate in SOTA (It has both art and academic courses), so I wouldn't know about poly or JC). So yeah, even if you're in the best class, you can still flunk out of the year if your grades drop drastically.
You also mentioned about Art school. I don't like the way its graded because it's fundamentally different from the way Mathematics and Sciences are graded. In M & S(I see something there), when you get poor grades, it means that you are wrong. Whereas in the Arts, you can get poor grades because you are different from what the grader expected. Objective vs Subjective. How do you even study for the Arts anyway?
To answer that question, in SOTA, art pieces are graded by amount of effort, sensitivity of materials, technical skill, and theory and concept utilised. There's no fixed grading scheme, but the results are usually decided with those variables and how well received is your artwork with the school populace. Also, good technical skill does not equivalate to a 'good' artwork. It depends on the amount of effort the artist put in, his intentions, and the public reaction. That's why they take forever to grade works; I'm still waiting for my EOY to be graded myself, even though the year already ended. Herp Derp. There are actual paper tests too, but those are on art history. (Do note that this is only the visual art perspective, there's still Music, Dance and Theatre. But I don't take those courses so I don't care at all!
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