Comment by MichaelRo

Well, I went through through the public school system from rural (hamlet) kindergarten till big city university and I say ... it's OK as a default baseline but if one wants some resemblance of competitiveness and performance from their kids, one cannot avoid private tutoring.

If that is done by the parents / family, then it's almost like home schooling. But I don't like home schooling because the kid is left out of the system and the studies are not recognized. At some point they will have to take traumatizing equivalence tests, which can be entirely avoided by playing along - go to a public school, or in my kid's case, a private school which follows the same curricula.

But I stress again, even with private school, there's no replacement for private tutoring if you want your kid to succeed in life.