The testing part of math education in Russia is anything but excellent in my own experience. You have to do EVERYTHING from memory. So it tests your memory first, your actual understanding second. I've always had serious problems with this stupid memorization part.

And it's not just math. Most of the education is reading the book and then reciting the book at an exam. Nothing else. No original thinking required. Just dumb information retrieval. It's humiliating, really.

But maybe the actual teaching is better than in other countries. I don't know. It's the testing that traumatized me.