Actually, this does indeed represent the education system as a hole, if not a whole. Sorry, being smart again. It sounds as if you had an awful school. My school had about 1400 pupils, but it was run by (generally) sympathetic staff. Of course some pupils went mad from time to time (in fact, since I left school, my only link back to it is looking in the paper to see who I know has been arrested), and members of staff went sadly crazy, but I do acknowledge that I have been lucky with my state-funded education.