The entry criteria aren't based on something like the SAT, although International Baccelaureate perhaps comes close in Europe? Not sure, maybe someone else can explain?

So there are no prep classes or anything like that in the UK. Everyone sits the same set of exams (modulo being Scottish or English/Welsh/NI, which have different types of qualification) and those results dictate whether you can go to University or not. I suppose you could study more if you wanted?

Surely anywhere there are exams, there are rich parents paying for exam prep in order to gain an advantage.

In Germany, university admission is based on your final grades in school, which are an accumulation of your grades of the last two years.

Rich parents can of course help their kids be better in school, but there is no efficient exam prepping.

Grades only really matter for medicine, psychology, and perhaps law. If you want to be an engineer or physicist or mathematician etc, they take everyone.

Better or richer schools will always have an advantage over schools with worse teachers or less funding, particularly with the way we currently do exams.

In Germany funding doesn't vary much for schools in the same region and is basically based on size of the student body.

The last two years of school are generally a prep course for the German SAT equivalent (and grades in those two years account for around two thirds of the final score).

>In Germany funding doesn't vary much for schools in the same region and is basically based on size of the student body.

In which case schools located in areas with a higher cost of living are effectively receiving less because any teacher working their, while on an absolute scale making the same, is making less on the more realistic scale that adjusts for cost of living.