Part 2
With the introduction of the OAA app still on everyone’s minds, the second period began.
And yet, the class was probably more concerned that Chabashira would officially start getting into ‘that’ now.
Unsurprisingly, this prediction had been spot-on.
“Now, I’ll give you guys an overview of the next special exam.”
With that, Chabashira broached the subject, almost as if she was starting off a normal, everyday lesson.
“The first special exam you’ll be taking this year will incorporate new experiences that you’ve never come across before, just like with the introduction of the app.”
Was this Tsukishiro’s doing, or was Nagumo the one behind it? Either way, the school seemed to be going through some major changes.
“The bottom line is that the exam will take the form of a written test where you second-years will be partnering up with the newly admitted first-years.”
“Partnered with… the first-years…?”
We had only rarely ever done something that skipped across the different school years before.
There were exceptions to this such as the training camp, but the established trend was for classes of the same year to compete against each other.
Had the barrier between school years been broken due to the introduction of the OAA app?
“This special exam will primarily focus on your test-taking and communication skills.”
Test-taking skills and communication skills.
Two concepts that, at first glance, didn’t seem to have anything to do with each other.
“The importance of test-taking skills needs no further explanation. However, before now, this school has never had any in-depth interaction between students of different school years other than during things like athletics festivals or training camps. Therefore, the school determined that your communication skills have fallen by the wayside.”
“B-but we’ll still be competing with others in our own school year, right? Something feels suspicious about this.”
The idea of getting heavily involved with the first-years seemed to make Ike a bit frustrated.
“It’s not like I don’t understand where you’re coming from, but try and think about it objectively for a second. In your first year after entering the workforce, the people you come in contact with won’t be fresh graduates like you. Some will be in their second year at the job, while others will be veterans touting 20 or 30 years, and you’ll be competing with them all the same. Despite the huge gap in experience, they very well might become rivals for you.”
“That’s… well, I guess I can imagine that.”
“While the world as a whole is slowly shifting over to a meritocracy, many Japanese companies are still bound up in the concepts of seniority and lifetime employment. For those of you who felt that it would be uncomfortable to interact with your upper or underclassmen when you heard about this special exam, I suggest that you reconsider. Put in a way that’s easy for you to understand, let’s consider the concept of grade skipping. Grade skipping is a fairly commonplace occurrence in other countries like America, Britain, and Germany. In those countries, it isn’t all that rare for small, young children to study together with high school or college students. Can any of you imagine or even accept the idea of an elementary school student studying together with you here, in this classroom?”
At Chabashira’s inclination, the class began to visualize the scenario. A scenario that they almost certainly weren’t able to comprehend. They must have felt that it was strange or even impossible.
It’s true that there were hardly any cases of students skipping grade levels in Japan. Although specific conditions had to be met, most people were probably unaware that it was even possible. In Japan, the concept doesn’t really align with the status quo where the education system is relatively linear. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Japan wasn’t willing to consider the concept in and of itself. For example, the White Room didn’t conform to this structure of education, so I could understand this fairly well.
However, I was certain that this wasn’t all there was to what Chabashira was saying.
It wasn’t just about imitating what other countries are doing. It’s also essential for Japan to adopt an education style suited to the Japanese climate. Chabashira was most likely aware of this herself, but had no choice but to give this explanation to us as instructed by the higher-ups.
“In the future, there will probably be more cases where you’ll compete against the first and third-year students. However, this particular exam is about helping you build cooperative relationships, so do well to keep that in mind.”
I found myself wondering if this was the reason why the special exam required both test-taking and communication skills. Some students seemed to be unable to wrap their heads around what the rules would be like, as they looked visibly confused at this point.
“The easiest way to get all of you to understand would be to remind you of one of the special exams you went through last year. You can think of this exam as an improved version of the Paper Shuffle exam, where you were partnered up from among your classmates.”
Paper Shuffle.
It was a special exam where we partnered up with a classmate and tackled a written exam together.
Essentially, this meant that we’d be partnering up with one of the first-years this time instead of partnering up with a classmate.
Even though that seemed to be the only difference, it was quite a large one.
“You’re free to partner up with anyone you want from the first-year students. The testing period will last until the end of the month, which is about two weeks from now. You’ll have plenty of time to both carefully choose your partner and focus on your studies.”
With a special exam like this, it made sense why they had us install the OAA app.
The first-years wouldn’t be familiar with the names and faces of the upperclassmen.
And naturally, the second-years wouldn’t be familiar with the names and faces of the underclassmen either.
During the Paper Shuffle exam last year, we were able to freely choose our partners after coming up with some workarounds thanks to the fact that the exam’s partnering system was handled from within the class.
In other words, students who weren’t very good at studying were able to just rely on someone else to survive the exam. However, the exam this time around would be different. Partnerships would be made on the premise that both sides would be looking for excellent students to pair up with. Moreover, instead of partnering up with our peers, we’d be partnering up with underclassmen we had little to no relationship with. The circumstances we were facing now in our second year were different from our first.
Above all else, it takes a fair amount of time to build up a trusting relationship from scratch.
Without the app, it would almost certainly be impossible to establish a meaningful relationship in just two weeks’ time.
But thanks to OAA, some shortcuts could be taken since you could just match someone’s face to their name in the app.
Furthermore, since the app also provides you with a rough idea of a prospective student’s academic abilities, it’d be easy to use it as a reference when making your decision on who to partner up with.
“You’ll be tested on five subjects on the day of the exam. Each subject will be worth 100 points, for a total of 500 points. Now for the most important part… this time, you’ll be evaluated based on two different standards. The first being your results as a class, and the second being your results as an individual.”
Chabashira tapped on the screen of the blackboard, bringing up the details for the special exam that she had just talked about.
Class Rewards (Split Based on School Year):
The inter-class competition will be based on the average score of each class in your school year. This will be derived from the combined scores of each person in the class added together with their respective partners.
Each class will be rewarded with either 50, 30, 10, or 0 class points, based on how their overall average score compares to the other classes in their school year.
Individual Rewards:
You will be graded based on the combined score of you and your partner.
The top five pairings will each receive a special reward of 100,000 private points.
The top 30% of pairings will each receive 10,000 private points.
In the event a pairing’s combined score fails to exceed 500 points, the second-year student will be expelled from the school and the first-year student will not receive any private points for the next three months, regardless of how many class points they might have.
Additionally, any student judged to have deliberately marked questions incorrectly or otherwise found to have manipulated or lowered their scores will be expelled regardless of their school year. Similarly, in the event a third party is found to have forced a student to lower his or her score, said third party will be expelled from the school as well.
“You should already be somewhat aware of this, but in this exam, the students with high Academic Ability ratings will be sought after first.”
If OAA didn’t exist, nobody would’ve been able to find out the true abilities of the other students. But now, with the advent of the app, that information was exposed for all to see. The lower your Academic Ability rating was, the harder it’d be to find a partner.
In all likelihood, the students who seemed weaker academically would get left in the dust.
Smart students would naturally join up with a smart partner and aim for the top rewards. Academically insecure students would also seek out intelligent partners in order to survive. The students with weak academic abilities would inevitably partner up together and, in the end, probably fall below the 500 point baseline. In which case, the harsh reality is that second-year students would then be expelled from the school.
The second-year students understood how the school worked and had developed lasting friendships with many of the people in their class.
Even if they didn’t go after the top rewards, they would probably still move to help support their classmates.
The first-year students, however, hadn’t had the chance to get very close to their class yet. As a result, the concept of somebody that they’re not very close friends with having to go without private points for three months probably wouldn’t seem like a very big deal. It would be just like at the beginning of last year when most of Class D was fine with abandoning Sud?… No, it would be even more extreme than that.
“Partnerships will be formed once both sides agree to it, and you can finalize the process by confirming it on the app. You’re allowed to form your partnerships whenever you want after this, but once you’ve confirmed who you’re going to pair up with, you won’t be allowed to change to someone else.”
With that being said, it would be difficult to make an immediate decision unless your partner’s academic abilities were insanely high.
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