I love the later age kids start school here, and I love Kindergarten (all my kids have attended the same one, so I've had a child at this Kindergarten without any break since 2008 and know all the staff well - I can't fault them and the kids are so happy there, and learn so much.
What they learn is not academic though, but they have a project day every week where they can choose what to do - they can focus on the term's topic, which is famous artists this term, or they can have a story morning where the teacher reads to them and they do role play and drawing etc. based around the story, or they can spend the day hiking and building dens in the forest, visiting bee hives with a bee keeper, spotting wild deer and other wildlife, leaning the names of trees and which wild plants are good for what... On other days they do a lot of Montessori style learning with learning stations around the room and a degree of free choice and a degree of being gently directed towards an activity - things like 3D puzzles and building and board games and pin boards and stuff. There is also always a drawing table and a building corner and a doll corner and a "cuddly" corner with a sofa, big floor cushions and books.
They have a wonderful huge garden which they are out in in all weather for at least an hour, and often all day in good weather, with trees they are allowed to climb and climbing frames and play houses and 3 big shaded sand pits, and in summer they switch the big old fashioned water pump on and build rivers and pools.
They do loads of outings too - to farms to learn about where food comes from, and to museums and to watch plays and puppet shows and all sorts, and they do a residential trip during their last year of Kindergarten for 3 nights! 
I have massive reservations about the actual school system after the golden Kindergarten years though, to bring things back around to Frimble's situation - school is very one size fits, all work at the same speed, chalk and talk, desks in rows... and then they separate the children out by academic ability so bloody young - DD was only 9 when the grades dictating which schools were open to her were finalised (she did just scrape the grades for grammar but she's a stress head so we didn't send her there... which is another thing I hate - that you have to make that decision for your kid at age 9 or 10... Though I do understand now that there is a lot more fluidity and flexibility in the system to change schools than I initially thought, it still sets them on a path...)
They also get an awful lot of homework - I think a lot of UK parents would have the shock of their lives - daily homework from the first day of school, and no way on earth you can just say your kid isn't doing it because you don't believe in it unless you want them to fall ridiculously far behind very fast and get in a world of trouble at school.
Teachers here also have far too much power to inflict their sometimes odd ball opinions on their charges, and are a left to be dictators of their own little fifedoms a bit too much if they are one of the occasional fruitloops... as long as they pass their classes along at the right average level across the board they seem to be fairly free to do as they please once fully qualified, which means the occasional older teachers who have been in one job for 30 years in backwater village schools get away with all sorts of old fashioned practice and playing very blatant favourites etc.