I don’t see it as wrong to have additional systems. The state system is there to provide for a basic need that will suffice for the majority, it doesn’t mean that people should be forced to use if they prefer not to. That’s like saying if the government provides a free bus, no-one should be allowed to pay for a taxi because of personal preference. We actually have 3 systems when you include home education as an alternate, and the government don’t help with that at all either.
If you were to take away the ability to chose not to use state system, for education, healthcare etc…and everyone gets the same…you start to lose some of the incentive to earn more to provide more for your own family (which means less income tax being paid). You would also get the most capable earners in society leaving the UK in search of better state/private systems available to them in other countries.
The genuinely bad/sad thing about the attack on the private school system, is that some parents have chosen it becuase their child has been bullied, suffered violence, lacked SEN/learning support, or had mental health issues triggered by the state school environment. Close down the local private school,,.and those parents are now faced with having no other option but to put their child back into a school that has already failed their child.
What the government fails to acknowledge is that state schools are often not good environments and don’t get the best out of every student. I’ve seen children at the end of 11 years of state funded education (mainstream), sit their GCSEs becuase their parents get billed for missed exams, and all they do is write their name on the front and don’t even open the question paper. I’ve also seen a child walking around waving a knife and not even get suspended becuase they are in the care in the care system and they can’t suspend them, there needs to be an alternative provision made and there isn’t one available. In an inner-city state secondary…there are things happening on a daily basis that if it was a workplace with adults…the police would be called. Schools have a general policy of not calling police, as that creates a negative news story….meaning the public don’t know the reality of how bad some of these schools really are.
Until the government can honestly claim that state schools are safe, that people are treated with respect and that teaching hours are used for teaching, and are not constantly disrupted for behaviour management…the state system is not something they should be trying to force on people who want to self-fund an alternative.