However, I was also certain what Chabashira was saying right now wasn’t everything. Imitating what other countries were doing wasn’t sufficient; Japan needed to have an educational system that fit Japan’s social climate. Chabashira probably knew this, too, but I was guessing she had no choice but to explain things to us in accordance with the orders she had received from higher up.
“There will probably be cases in the future where you’ll be competing against first-year and third-year students. But this time, you’ll be cooperating with one another. Please keep that in mind,” said Chabashira.
Was that why we were having this special exam that required both written test-taking skills and communication skills? Some students were cocking their heads to the side in apparent confusion, perhaps because they were unable to imagine what the rules would be like.
“The best way to understand how this will work is for you to think back to one of your special exams from last year. It’s probably easier for you to wrap your heads around this test if you think of it as an improved, modified version of the Paper Shuffle exam, where you had to find a partner from among your classmates,” said Chabashira.
The Paper Shuffle had been a special exam where we had to form pairs with a classmate and then handle taking a test together. Essentially, we wouldn’t be partnering with someone from our own class this time, but rather with first-year students, from the sounds of it. Even though that seemed like the only difference, it was a huge one.
“You are free to decide which of the first-years you want to partner up with, from any class. The partner selection period is about two weeks, starting today and lasting until the end of the month. You’ll have time both to carefully select your partners and devote yourselves to your studies,” said Chabashira.
With how this special exam worked, it was no wonder we were being made to install the OAA app at this stage. The first-year students obviously wouldn’t be familiar with the names and faces of their seniors, and the second-year students wouldn’t be familiar with the names and faces of first-years. In the Paper Shuffle, where we’d picked partners from among our classmates, we were able to do so freely, with nuance and coordination, precisely because we were choosing from among people we knew well. This made it easy for a student who was poor at academics to make it through with someone else’s support.
This exam, however, was different. It operated on the premise that both students would be looking for an excellent partner. Moreover, instead of partnering up with students in our grade level, we’d be partnering with first-years, who we had no relationship with. The first-years and second-years were each working with their own unique set of circumstances, too. We each had our own things to deal with.
More importantly, it took a considerable amount of time to build a relationship of trust from nothing. If we wanted to build such a relationship without this app, then two weeks would most certainly not be enough. With the OAA app, however, we could take some shortcuts by being able to recognize names and faces based on what we saw in the app. Moreover, since we could get a rough sense of everyone’s current academic ability, it would be easy for us to use it as reference when looking for partners.
“On the day of the written test, you will be tested on five subjects. Each subject is worth one hundred points, for a total of five hundred points. And the most important rule is… Well, this time, there are two areas in which you’ll be competing. As a class and as individuals,” said Chabashira.
She held her finger up to the blackboard, bringing up the display for the results of the special exam.
Class Rewards For Each Grade Level
The winning class will be determined based on each class’s average score, which will be derived from the scores of all members of the class and the scores of all their partners. The Class Point rewards are fifty points, thirty points, ten points, and zero points, in descending order of average score.
Individual Rewards
Winners are determined based on the combined scores of each pair of partners. The top five pairs will receive 100,000 Private Points each as a special reward. Pairs who score in the top thirtieth percentile will each receive 10,000 points. In the event that a pair has a total score of 500 points or less, the second-year student will be expelled, and the first-year student will not receive any Private Points for a period of three months, regardless of how many Class Points their class has.
In addition, any student determined to have manipulated their scores, such as by purposefully answering questions incorrectly, will be expelled, regardless of their grade level. Similarly, in the event that a third party is found to have forced another student to lower their score, that third party will be expelled.
“I’m sure you already have an inkling of this, but in this exam, students with excellent academic ability will be highly sought after,” said Chabashira.
If we didn’t have the OAA app, we wouldn’t have been able to see those kinds of details. But with the release of this app, students’ abilities were now on full display for everyone to see. The worse a students’ academic ability score, the harder it would be for that student to find a partner. It was clear that the students who had concerns about their grades were likely to be left behind.
Smart students would, naturally, try to team up with smart partners and aim for the top rewards. Students who struggled with their grades would similarly seek smart partners in order to survive. If two poor students, of which there were many, ended up teaming up, they might very well score under the five-hundred-point mark. If that happened, the second-year student would face the harsh reality of expulsion.
Second-year students understood how this school worked and had developed more than a few friendships within their classes. They would probably try to help their classmates, even if it meant giving up on the higher-level rewards. The first-year students, however, would naturally struggle to unite their classes for now. As a result, they wouldn’t give all that much thought to the fact that a student they didn’t know very well, whom they weren’t really friends with, would have to go three months without getting any Private Points. It wouldn’t seem like all that big a deal to them.
It would be just like that time a year ago, when almost everyone in our class was thinking about abandoning Sudou… No, actually, it would be even worse than that.
“Partnerships are established based on mutual acceptance from both participants, and they are finalized via registration in the OAA app. It will be possible for you to select a partner from this moment onward, but keep in mind that once your partner has given their consent and the match has been confirmed, you will not be allowed to dissolve the partnership afterward for any reason,” explained Chabashira.
That made it all the harder to choose quickly, unless the other person’s academic ability was especially high. A hasty decision could lead to regret down the line.
The monitor refreshed, then displayed information related to partnerships.
Methods and Rules for Determining a Partner
Students are allowed to send a partner request per day to the person they wish to partner with, using the OAA app. If the partner request is not accepted by the other party, your ability to send a fresh request will be reset at 24:00.
If the other party does accept your partner request, the partnership will be confirmed, and you will not be allowed to cancel the partnership afterward.
*Note: The only exception to this rule is certain extenuating circumstances, such as if the other student has been expelled or is seriously ill.
Once a partnership has been confirmed, the OAA app will be updated at 8:00 a.m. on the following day, and both students will not be able to accept any new partner requests.
*Note: The names of who students have partnered up with will not be shown in the app.
With these rules in place, you couldn’t just send out a large number of partner requests at random. And even if you did send a request to a specific person, that request might end up going to waste, because that person might already have partnered with someone else that day and you wouldn’t know until the app updated at 8:00 a.m the following day.
I didn’t know if a student would really accept a partner request from someone they didn’t know too well, though. Most likely, these rules were put in place as a measure to make it impossible to know who had teamed up with who. It would make it too easy to estimate the strength of each class if the details of the partnerships were shown right from the start, I supposed.
“Sensei! But it’s like, there’s no way there’ll be a single kouhai who’ll want to partner up with me, though! Are you seriously saying that a complete moron like me has to somehow make this work with just my communication skills?!” wailed Ike.
His lamentation was entirely justified. The chances of someone needing a student with poor grades, like him, were quite low until that someone ran out of options for other students they wanted to team up with.
That is, if you were doing things the proper way, of course.
“Don’t worry. The school has taken certain things into account to ensure no one gets left behind, no matter how many students fail to find partners. In the event that you are unable to pair with someone before the special exam is held, pairings will be selected randomly at eight in the morning on the day of the test,” explained Chabashira.
Ike held a hand up to his chest after hearing what could be interpreted as a measure intended to provide us with relief. But that moment of relief was short-lived.