My British state education really did feel like "memorise just enough to jump through these arbitrary hoops which keep the government off our backs" sometimes. It's very exam-driven rather than learning for its own sake and apparently it's got even worse since schools started transitioning to academies and Gove's reforms took effect.
Normally the curriculum was split between knowledge and understanding, and problem solving. You could memorize the first part and not the second part. The problem solving sorted out who got the grades
