As it stands, vocational education is faltering but high school is still ptetty strong - and they are mandatory untill you are 18. Not all vocational school/trade schools suck, but I've talked with a good deal of young students (hundreds) to get s feel that there are staggering differences in how much the teachers care, or are able to motivte the kids into caring about learning.

If you take vocational education/trade school, there's a good chance you have a single course or two of publics, history or similar subjects and that's that.

It's also turning into a bit of a gender issue, since our high schools are skewing heavily toward female students, with boys opting more and more to do trade school, partially due to lack of grades, partially because they feel like the school system isn't for them and studying theory is unpleasant or downright hard. So they get demotivated and go where it's considered "easier", and scrape by.

After you graduate secondary education, a lot if guys don't pursue further studies, so their access to education and discourse stalls. Young women do pursue higher education though, but it is not an idel situation at all.