Is my school doing the IB normally?

I've heard that most IB schools will give out predicted grades for their students at the end of DP1 to use, after having done two mock exams. Apparently, this isn't the case for mine.

The IB coordinators at our school keeps on insisting that our DP1 grades do not matter, and only gives progress grades. We also have only one "end of year" mock exam session in September with no mid-years. The actual school year ends in November. Furthermore, teachers are forbidden from predicting 7s. They will instead, intentionally predict lower because 7s are reserved for DP2. This means that even those who manage to get 7s in every subject will usually have their progress grade capped at a 36/42 unless they score exceeding well(think 90% on the whole set of exam papers that they'll be taking 14 months from then).

Most students usually end up improving another 5-8 points by the end of DP2. We only get our predicted grades after the September mocks in the second year, just two months before the finals in November. This is a stark contrast compared to other IB schools around the world, where students get their predicteds at the end of DP1 and typically would only have to pass the diploma to meet uni offers.

Is our school doing this right? Their approach to this is...weird. Is this normal? Do any of y'all's schools have a similar system?