| My current school has no set age requirements for when a person can test for black belt, and that's something I've brought up to the head instructors recently.
Much like Silv3r's school, the dojo I trained at in Japan had two types of black belts: junior dan and adult dan. You could get a junior dan ranking at a very young age if you met the requirements, which were mostly mastering techniques, one-step sparring, kata, and medium-contact padded sparring. Junior dans could only progress to third degree. However, you had to be at least 13 to test for an adult dan ranking, and the requirements for that were a lot more brutal. In addition to meeting the same requirements as the junior dan, adult dan testing involved breaking and full-contact no pads sparring.
I liked the way that system worked because it visibly seperated junior ranks from the adult ranks.
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