Comment by vasco

Also a lot of countries have different goals, and most people when they think of optimization of schooling think of better outcomes at the top end, whereas administrators think of better outcomes at the bottom end. The difference between stimulating your smartest people enough that they become leading beacons of their field vs minimizing the amount of people that get left behind. In some places there's a mixed approach with magnet schools but there's many countries where that doesn't exist.