The english you learn in school here isn't that bad, at least it wasn't in my case (granted that's only second hand knowledge since my english was already okayish when we had our first lesson at school). The standard might depend on the region though.
It's a terribly boring boring way to learn a language, but it works well enough to give you a solid basis during the first few years after which you usually start working with texts outside of schoolbooks. And and passing the initial barrier is much less of a pain if you have someone teaching you (You realize that once you try to teach yourself a language which isn't as similar to the ones you already know).