Canada

I was curious about this topic, so I looked it up and found this Atlantic article.

It begins:

if the purpose of academic grading is to communicate accurate and specific information about learning, letter, or points-based grades, are a woefully blunt and inadequate instrument. Worse, points-based grading undermines learning and creativity, rewards cheating, damages students' peer relationships and trust in their teachers, encourages students to avoid challenging work, and teaches students to value grades over knowledge.

Also, to clear up a possible misunderstanding (that I had and others may have), getting rid of letter grades does not mean getting rid of evaluation. Instead, students are assessed on whether they are achieving/not achieving proficiency in specific skills.

I don't know enough about early childhood education to comment on this in an informed way. But I do find the contrast between this change and Ontario returning cursive to the curriculum interesting.

Quebec switched to something like that along with a push to make kids move on no matter if they met minimum standards or not. My friend who works in a Cegep (technical education/pre university) told me that in their case the number of students who require special classes to bring them to an acceptable level of knowledge in french or mathematics increased tenfold over 3 years, the only difference being pre and post reform cohorts.

We haven't had letter grades (not % or numbers either) here in Regina for more than 10 years for grades up to 8. High school (9-12) just uses a %.