I think it’s so weird that your level of education in the US (and most of the world really) seems to depend on which specific school you went to.

The Netherlands has settled on three levels of schooling and within that level (according to capacity, and desire to learn) most of the schools show relatively little variation.

The same thing continues into university, with pretty much 99% of all the universities in the Netherlands being public.

You don’t select a university based on level of theoretical educational attainment, you select one by virtue of proximity, or which of them teaches the specific courses you are interested in.

Dutch PISA scores have fallen badly, though. We moved here from Ireland and the basisschools seem kinda mediocre compared to what we had in Ireland. My eldest certainly learned to read much better.

Schoelenopdekaart shows pretty wide variation in how many students go on to vwo etc.