Education...

Is it preferable for education to be run by private organisations rather than the State?

Are you saying run by private companies but paid for by the state or something different?

How could privatisation ensure education for all?

If there is one sector we have to prevent from privatising, it's education. The educational development of young people is too important to allow corporations to mess with.

Do you also think that it is too important for politicians to mess with as well?

What exactly do you mean by that?

You think that the educational development of young people is too important for corporations to mess with. I agree. But do you also think that it is too important for politicians to mess with?

In our society, we've got a choice between the education system being run by the private sector or the public sector. In an idea world, the education system would be run purely by teachers and people who properly understand education and children, but this isn't going to happen. No, the government isn't perfect and Gove is an absolute idiot. But the damage he is inflicting is absolutely nothing compared to what would happen if it were privatised. At least the primary goal of the education system isn't profit.

Private schools provide a better education than state ones, who over the years have been hampered by government and politicians; how can you claim that a fully privatised education system would be in any way worse than what we have now?

Firstly, is there any evidence for your first assertion? Private schools get more children into the top universities, but those children were also generally more intelligent to start with. The average private school leaver may be better qualified than the average state school leaver, but the average state school leaver will have made a greater improvement from where they started off with. I should also add that there are a huge number of state schools that outperform the overwhelming majority of private schools. Remember that grammar schools are all publicly funded, and there are a large number of highly successful comprehensives too.

Also, I'm not sure you really understand what a privatisation of the state sector would mean. It certainly wouldn't turn every state school into a mini-Eton or Harrow! Look at the US for an example of what happens when private companies take over education. Pfizer controls a number of schools in their district and explicitly advertises to children, with advertising quotas for teachers. They've turned the education system into a Pfizer-employee generator.

Private schools provide a higher standard of education as primarily, but not exclusively, evidenced by the fact that they obtain much better grades than their state counterparts. Not only that, they also provide an array of extra curricular activities, such as sports, music and drama that is not found at all state schools.

State schools are a bit of a lottery. You have really good ones that make private school a waste of money, you have really bad ones where much of the pupils are armed and no-one goes to university, and you have the average ones.

Ultimately, the issue comes down to this: independent schools are free from the shackles of government and politicians when it comes to what and how they teach, who they employ to teach and what they can offer. They don't employ a "one size fits all" approach to education, and as a result are able to deliver much better outcomes.

I'm definitely certain that you do not understand what privatisation of the state sector would look like. We already have a fairly large private sector within education; very little, if any, of it is run by "corporations". Instead what we see are schools providing a higher quality of education (as well as extra curriculars), autonomous from the government.

What I would propose is a voucher system, where parents are free to spend their vouchers on a school of their choice, that they best feel meets the needs of their children.

Better results does not mean a better education. What matters is how far you progress, not where you end up. Children from private schools tend to end up further up the ladder, but they also tend to start further up the ladder. There is actually a very strong argument that state schools provide children with a much better preparation for life, as was argued (successfully) in a debate at the Cambridge Union a while ago. I can give you a link to that debate if you're interested, which I hope you would be.

You are mixing up private schools with privatised education systems, which are completely different.

How on earth do people who go to private schools start higher up the ladder?

In a privatised education system there would only be private schools. Whether they were ran by corporations or continued as independent schools isn't really important to this debate. I'm not sure why you're even bringing up corporations running schools to be honest. Not sure such a scenario is any better or worse than a school being ran by heavily unionised teachers who entered the profession solely because they couldn't get into anything else, either.

1) Because they're richer, which is directly proportional to academic attainment. It's a simple fact of life in a capitalist society.

2) I'm not going to have an argument with someone who says nonsense like "teachers who entered the profession solely because they couldn't get into anything else, either". If you want to have a debate, give me something to debate against. Stuff like that is not worth responding to.