Most federal states in Germany have or used to have a three-track model. When it was designed back during the Kaiser's time the idea was that track one ought to take like 60% of the student population and instill mostly the basics, track 2 should take 30% and give the foundations for becoming a low-to-mid-level engineer, skilled tradesman, competent basic white collar worker etc., and track 3 the elite rest destined to go to the top of society.
Nowadays, due to the exact drift you describe, track 1 is for the dumbest of the dumb, track 2 for the ever so slightly less dumb, and everyone else crams into track 3. Some states have recognized this reality and simply abolished the formal distinction between the three types and have allowed every school, even those from the former track 1, to hand out the necessary certification for tertiary education, which they of course eagerly give to basically everyone (the average grades for this Abitur exam, the German equivalent to the French Baccalauréat or the UK's A-Levels, have skyrocketed over the past decades, even as a bigger percentage of the population takes it and overall scores in more objective tests like PISA have declined pretty badly).
The only way a tracked system works out is if the people maintaining it are willing to accurately filter students. Since there are about a trillion arguments that move typical Western minds, particularly those attracted to the education system, to immediately stop doing this ("it's too early set someone's life in stone!", "the only reason I sucked in school is because my teachers were mean/racist/sexist" etc. pp.), no institutional (re)form will fix this unless the overall culture moves back to being fine with distinguishing people very clearly on their revealed cognitive abilities.
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Most federal states in Germany have or used to have a three-track model. When it was designed back during the Kaiser's time the idea was that track one ought to take like 60% of the student population and instill mostly the basics, track 2 should take 30% and give the foundations for becoming a low-to-mid-level engineer, skilled tradesman, competent basic white collar worker etc., and track 3 the elite rest destined to go to the top of society.
Nowadays, due to the exact drift you describe, track 1 is for the dumbest of the dumb, track 2 for the ever so slightly less dumb, and everyone else crams into track 3. Some states have recognized this reality and simply abolished the formal distinction between the three types and have allowed every school, even those from the former track 1, to hand out the necessary certification for tertiary education, which they of course eagerly give to basically everyone (the average grades for this Abitur exam, the German equivalent to the French Baccalauréat or the UK's A-Levels, have skyrocketed over the past decades, even as a bigger percentage of the population takes it and overall scores in more objective tests like PISA have declined pretty badly).
The only way a tracked system works out is if the people maintaining it are willing to accurately filter students. Since there are about a trillion arguments that move typical Western minds, particularly those attracted to the education system, to immediately stop doing this ("it's too early set someone's life in stone!", "the only reason I sucked in school is because my teachers were mean/racist/sexist" etc. pp.), no institutional (re)form will fix this unless the overall culture moves back to being fine with distinguishing people very clearly on their revealed cognitive abilities.
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