School in other countries

This doesn't pertain directly to our material, but it's a subject that interests me so I'll write about it anyway. Today at the after school program where I work, I had a conversation with a couple second graders about their school life and what school is like in other countries. This got me thinking, so I decided to do some research. One country whose school systems I learned about is Indonesia. Indonesia is a relatively small country in land area, but has the third largest population in the world. Because of this there is a very high population density and many schools start as early as 6 o'clock in the morning to account for high amounts of traffic. The schools in Indonesia didn't seem that different from ours, they still require 12 years of education as in the United States. One thing that interests me is that their high school curriculum has almost no flexibility. All high school students must take classes in English, science, math, history, computer science and other areas. according to a few articles I read English Education in Indonesia is pretty poor and most high school graduates can't really speak English. My only personal insight into foreign education is my uncle, who lived in Korea for a couple years. He married a Korean woman who taught Middle School English in Korea, which astounds me because she speaks very little English. I'm sure that other countries, especially European ones have superior English education, but with what I've heard learning English is very difficult for non English speakers because it is structured very differently.