Standard attainment tests (SATs) have been used in the US education system for decades. Think Bart Simpson constantly getting an F. These tests have to be passed for the pupil to progress to the next year group - they are kept back otherwise irrespective of their chronological age.
Thatcher's spawn -oh sorry, the Conservative government - introduced SATs into primary and secondary schools in England and Wales in the 1980s at the at the ends of (effectively) infant, junior and lower school secondary ie ages 7, 11 and 14.
It was predicted at the time, and indeed has come to pass, that this would be impossible to administer fairly and with meaning and so the number was reduced to one SAT, at age 11.
Back in my day we called this 'the 11-plus'. What goes round.....
In the UK SATs have resulted in spurious and easily-challenged statistics, immense stress on teachers, immense anxiety among pupils and parents, a publishing industry aimed at profiting by selling cramming tests and a whle layer of Whitehall bureaucracy whose wages we have paid to keep this misery in place.
But I expect there will be some supporters of SATs out there, and the world through the Mosaic window can seem a little jaundiced at times.