> That all the public schools I know in Europe, either directly or indirectly, are pretty much of the same quality
That is definitely not the case here in Romania.
One of my personal projects involves mapping the results of Romania's National Exams for pupils at the end of 8th grade (in here [1] are the results for Bucharest), and as you can see on the linked map/link there are definetly better (colored with green, with average school grade higher than the average for Bucharest) and worse schools (colored with red). Going back to 2015, let's say (meaning at this link [2]), one can see that the schools colored green have remained pretty much the same, and the same goes for the red/worst schools.
I have a close friend who's a math highschool teacher in the French Education system and he confirmed to me that a similar situation takes place in France (the Paris area, to be more exact).
That is definitely not the case here in Romania.
One of my personal projects involves mapping the results of Romania's National Exams for pupils at the end of 8th grade (in here [1] are the results for Bucharest), and as you can see on the linked map/link there are definetly better (colored with green, with average school grade higher than the average for Bucharest) and worse schools (colored with red). Going back to 2015, let's say (meaning at this link [2]), one can see that the schools colored green have remained pretty much the same, and the same goes for the red/worst schools.
I have a close friend who's a math highschool teacher in the French Education system and he confirmed to me that a similar situation takes place in France (the Paris area, to be more exact).
[1] https://mihaitc.github.io/scoli/bucuresti/
[2] https://mihaitc.github.io/scoli/2015/bucuresti/