After watching a documentary about American state (public) schools I would say that if I lived in the US and had kids I would feel obliged to enroll them in a private school! The environment that was shown in the documentary was terrible and I don't see how the child could get a good start or succed in their studies in such an environment. The lack of discipline and knowledge was unbelievable. How could American politicians let things get so out of control?

In a better state school shown as a contrast, it just seemed that being "cool" was the main objective for going to school, not learning... No doubt there are exceptions, but after seeing that I felt really sorry for American parents. What a nightmare situation.

In Britain some state schools are bad and some are very good. The trick is getting the child into a good state school ("grammar school") and get a top class education for free. Parents will revert to ANY strategy! The most common one is to start attending church so the child can get a place in a church-run school (requires active church membership..) or buying a house right next to a particularly good school. This skews the housing market in a very odd way.. The system seems TOTALLY BIZARRE to a foreigner.

In Sweden all schools are more or less the same... Not bad but not exceptionally good either. A lot of talent is lost by not channeling the brightest kids into more challenging courses where their skills can be developed. Hardly anyone supports private education but recently a few more private schools have started whereas before that there were only a few in the whole country. Such schools usually specialise in something, like sports or music.

I also saw a Youtube video of a school in Ukraine. The teachers seemed REALLY passionate and competent and the children appeared motivated. The school building looked like it had once been very nice. But all the equipment was outdated and the school was clearly short of money -- this was casting a long shadow over the situation. The children had no access to modern electronic equipment at all.

What's the situation in Russia and other ex USSR countries and how does it compare to the above examples?