With An Inconvenient Truth in 2007, director Davis Guggenheim brought the pressing issue of global warming to the big screen, winning an Oscar and proving that Michael Moore wasn’t the only documentary filmmaker who could bring in a crowd. Waiting for “Superman” is a similarly sobering experience, in which he asks us again to face up to our responsibilities – not to Mother Earth this time, but to our children.

Driven by an uneasy conscience (sparked by his experiences trying to secure a proper education for his own kids, he tells us), and armed with an array of alarming statistics and a succession of impassioned talking heads – kids, parents, educators, reformers and the almighty Bill Gates – Guggenheim goes up against a cold and insulated enemy: the flawed public school system in America. He takes aim at the droves of bad teachers who are shirking their duty to adequately prepare students for entry into high school and college, as well as the officials who allow the self-defeating system to perpetuate. He raises problems like the near impossibility of firing teachers (protected by the rights provided by tenure), no matter how rotten they are, and the tendency of timid bureaucrats to sabotage radical but promising reform proposals, on the grounds that they would generate controversy.

Some of the statistics are provocative and disarming. For instance, the notion that the cost of housing a prison inmate for the average term of four years is greater than that of a child’s education up till college, or that some schools in America (or “drop-out factories”, as they are described here) expect as little as a third of incoming high school students to actually graduate. It must be said that the film skims over a few significant details, however – the teachers under fire are not given a voice, and the parents interviewed are all intensely involved in their child’s situation, which is not a statistically authentic representation. On the other hand, it doesn’t lay the blame solely on the teachers, and most of the families interviewed are clearly struggling and underprivileged, fervently supportive despite their trying circumstances.

Rest assured that Waiting for “Superman” is not all about graphs and percentages. In the end, what makes it so effective is that it balances hard data with a sharp focus on a handful of kids at the mercy of the status quo – their hopes, obstacles and helplessness in an environment entirely controlled by adults. Their involvement charges the film with emotion, especially when we watch with them as numbers are virtually drawn out of a hat to determine which of them (sometimes at a rate as low as 1 in 20) will be granted entry into the coveted charter schools. It is a heart-breaking scene; the tension and desperation are tangible and the ruthlessness of the system is truly barbaric.

While it won’t make it to the top of many lists of feel-good movies, Waiting for “Superman” is actually (dare I say) very entertaining. The interviews are edited so that all the fat is cut out and each point hits home, some scenes are propelled by a sparse but poignant musical theme and, crucially, it does have a sense of humour – for example, it shows many images from film and television related to the theme of education throughout the modern age, offering brief but amusing glimpses of Superman, Jack Black, and perhaps America’s greatest comedian of the 21^st century, George Bush. Like Guggenheim’s disturbing film about climate control, it investigates a subject that concerns us all, directly or otherwise. Both a compelling, inspiring film and a sombre, stinging experience, Waiting for “Superman” doesn’t claim to have all the answers – but like all topical documentaries with a worthy approach, it encourages awareness and debate about yet another inconvenient truth.