My experience, and that of my kids (in USA) is that pencil is used through high school for daily work. When I was in school, final drafts of essays or other papers could be in ink or typed. Math and science was always done in pencil. Today, pretty much everything written is submitted by computer. Kids can barely print legibly, forget about cursive writing or any care for penmanship.
Pencils are not valid for most (all?) exams in the kindof high school I went to and definitely not valid in university exams (in Austria). It's just too easy to fake afterwards
My experience, and that of my kids (in USA) is that pencil is used through high school for daily work. When I was in school, final drafts of essays or other papers could be in ink or typed. Math and science was always done in pencil. Today, pretty much everything written is submitted by computer. Kids can barely print legibly, forget about cursive writing or any care for penmanship.