Admittedly this is just a college project of mine, but it does reflect my opinions. Views on it?
Private schools, should they exist? The answer is an absolute no.So many students from working class backgrounds do not achieve the success they deserve, not because of their ability but because of the school they attended. It is estimated that 50 per cent of Oxbridge students attended private schools, despite the fact that only 5-7% of children of school age attend private schools. The vast majority of politicians and leading figures in society attended Oxbridge. Therefore to a large extent the country is being run by a minority whose parents happened to be a bit better off.
However, we must look at why private education should exist in the first place.
In our society, successful people earn more money and therefore can afford more, such as sending their children to a school with better facilities and smaller classes. However, why should their children benefit? The only thing the child has done is be born into a family with wealth. They are handed an advantage over their working-class neighbours from the moment they start life.
Apparently, those with wealth are more important. They are able to get better education and healthcare. Not exactly very humanitarian is it? People should be treated equally, regardless of wealth or social status. Everyone should get free education and the only schools that should exist are state schools. Healthcare should also be free and the only provider should be the NHS. Of course more wealth means more duties to society and the rich should pay significantly higher taxes to ensure that these services are well funded and world-class.
Smashing the private school system and with it the 'old boy's network' would also break the glass ceiling that is preventing many of the country's most gifted individuals from getting the chance they deserve, because of the situation they were born into.
The State education system and the NHS have their own priorities which don't necessarily or even at all coincide with those of the working class. There are also massive class divisions in the quality of services offered by them - both geographically and in terms of opportunity for access within communities. They also represent vast bureaucracies, which take up quite a lot of resources, and still manage to give a lot of work to profit making companies (construction, maintenance, exam boards, caterers). Although it isn't entirely private delivery of services, and access is limited more by status and bureaucracy than finance, it still serves the same interests overall.
There are also experimental schools (like Summerhill) which aren't allowed to operate within the state system, but at least when they were set-up, were an attempt to challenge both private and state systems of education (although they're legally private schools). I don't know much about the actual workings of those schools, but they, and also home education (do people still do this?) offer an alternative to both systems, and in a very limited way, a model of how education could be in a post-revolutionary society. Education should be socialised (under the control of communities), but not state-run.