In the UK, school is compulsory up until the age of 16. You are legally obliged to attend school, and if you do not, then it is your parents who take the hit.
After 16, school is entirely optional. You can drop out at any point, or simply not continue at all.

It figures logically that if the British government are going to demand you attend school, then they cant viably force you to pay as well. Hence the state sector.
State school is the general term for a school which is fully, or partially funded by the government, and is thus free for pupils to attend.

The other ‘breed’ of school is Public School, for which you have to pay out of your own pocket. Unfortunately however, not only do you have to pay, you have to pay an extortionate amount!
In Britain the likes of Eton, and Harrow ring bells when public school is referenced. Is it however worth paying to go to school?

I come from an informed background with regards to this topic: I attended Packwood Haugh (from 10-13), and Shrewsbury School (from 13-18). Both well respected public schools.
I also have family who have attended Eton, and a variety of friends at public schools all around the country.
Now my parents footed the bill for my education, for that I am thankful. I, however never wanted to attend public school, and thus I feel I have no obligation of thanks towards my parents. I am not ungrateful, it is simply that my parents were the ones that ‘thought’ public school was the best route for me and my education.. they wanted to pay, and that was their choice.

My distaste for public school arose because during an 8 year period, my education has been hindered both socially, and academically by public school. I came out of school with 10 GCSEs, and 4 A-Levels all at A or A* Standard. By any standards that is very good, and I am sure my respective schools would happily take the credit for those results. I however feel from actually enduring the experience that I could have matched, or improved on those grades, AND enjoyed myself more had I studied at the local college.
Now, I have no intention of starting a stick throwing match with any individuals BUT I will list a few things about public school that I think are ridiculous:

At Packwood
i) You were only allowed 50p worth of sweets per week. You were not allowed to bring in anything from home.
ii) You had absolutely no freedom: you had no access to computers, you had no access to the outside, phones were not allowed etc
iii) You were bound by a ridiculous set of timings: you do this at x, this at y, and that at z. Then Bed! (None of the set ‘things’ were fun).

Now between 10-13 admittedly you are young, and innocent. You need guidance, and rules to an extent. However I feel that if you are actively thinking ‘This is ridiculous’ at 11, then something is seriously wrong.

At Shrewsbury
i) You have no freedom. You are not allowed to make mistakes, they essentially ban growing up. I learned almost everything I have in life breaking the rules.
I agree, it is better to avoid a fight, but at least if you get into one you will know not to do it again.
Rules such as no eating food from outside school really took the biscuit… McDonalds is a part of teenage life. Simple as.
To a lesser extent: drinking. Fair enough be strict on it if you are underage, but imposing rules such as ‘You can’t go to the pub’, even when you are old enough again, really take the mick. Some people actually want a life..
Then there was chapel, which had a compulsory attendance. I got threatened with expulsion for not attending chapel (ridiculous in itself).. The fact that I did not want to, and would rather have had a lie in, apparently did not translate to the school staff. Admittedly that sounds damn lazy, it was, BUT I got nothing from chapel, it was simply a waste of my time. I would have liked to have been able to make my own choices thank you.

ii) Staff. A surprisingly large number of the teaching staff were totally incompetent. You know something is wrong when the pupils teach the teachers, and the ‘big boys’ fail to acknowledge the idiocy contained within their workforce. If I am paying thousands of pounds a year, I’d actually like to get something for it.
On the flip side, some of the staff were absolutely awesome, and great people. In some of my subjects although I had 2 teachers, 1 teacher taught us everything as the other was so bad. Fortunately I never had 2 buffoons. It was sufficiently bad that I had to personally request to move classes at one point for fear of failing an A-Level. The rest of my class mates were not best please, because they all wanted a move too!
I imagine that on numerous occasions the heads have been made aware of this problem, and yet they do nothing. It sucks for the staff who are good, and essentially work double time, to help the students.

iii) Censorship. In relation to ii), I previously had a website, and on it at one point I posted about the above: the incompetency of staff etc. Admittedly it was written in ’15 year old’ but independent of that, it was merely fact.
I got detention, my website was blocked, and what for… the truth.
In continuation, the Internet was severely filtered. Again, if you are under 18.. block porn, but games, videos, proxies etc… we all have a right to do as we please. If we lived at home we could, and would be browsing such topics, so this is clear, blatant, and unsubstantiated censorship.

iv) Charity. WTF you are most probably thinking, charity is great… Yes it is but not the Shrewsbury way. Shrewsbury is a registered charity, for self professed tax reasons (now that is naughty). The school is essentially a business, but to increase the efficiency of their extortion they have managed to become a charity.
On occasions they have worked with other charities, for example ‘Shrewsbury House’, a youth group of sorts running in Everton. Every 5 years they run a 27 mile sponsored walk for charity. Great ! BUT We paid £26,000 a year (oh did I not mention how ridiculous the fees were), and they then expect us to pay MORE out of our own pockets for a hostel they run..
I’m not a spoilt arse, and I am happy to raise sponsorship for such a charity BUT if the school is a charity in itself, surely it could spare £100 from each of our stupendous bills to the group…

To extend on the business side of the school, the school as of this year started accepting girls. This ended over 100 years of tradition. A good decision for the male pupils, but it is pretty obvious this was done for nothing more than money, and press. Only now will they realise that such a transition is not easy..

v) Extortion. This is an interesting one. Not only did the school extort its pupils, charging ridiculous fees, for awful teachers, lack of freedom, and social injustice, they were also found to be extorting us. Apparently (and it does not surprise me), the reason our already ridiculous fees went up each year was because a few of the top public schools (including Eton) were price fixing: raising their prices together, to similar levels such that there was no cheaper option for potential students.
The extortion in the price was explained to me to be for the new building work that took place, and all the facilities available to us. They did build an impressive swimming pool, and an amazing cricket center. Problem is I never used the cricket center.. so why should I be paying for it? I asked, and it was explained it was because it all averaged out.. some people use this, but not that etc. However this was a blatant fallacy, it was essentially sportsmen used everything, the others used nothing. Ergo, the sportsmen should pay.
To add to that, the exotic sporting trips: football teams going to valencia, and tennis teams going to Portugal (amongst other things). As far as I could figure we (the other pupils) paid for them to go. Now I am all for supporting teams, and friends but not £26k..!

vi) Perverts, and Paedos. Add Mike Clarkson into the mix: a classics teacher, who taught tennis. On a tennis trip to Portugal he proceeded to film a pupil ‘at it’. Then there is the pupil that took up-skirt photos of female staff…
So if the above was not bad enough, we were also in a community full of wierdos.

Based on the above, I think it is easy to understand why such a school attracted the super rich, the ridiculously posh, and the pompous.
The super rich just want to show off how rich they are, the ridiculously posh are of the attitude that ‘State schools are full of chavs’ (yet we cannot blame their simple minds), and the pompous were those who were sad enough to actually have arguments about how old their money was.. ‘Herbert you are nuevo riche!, Daddy says you are scum!’.
I kid you not those kind of people made up about 80% of the community, and to be honest thinking back it sickens me.

Just to add I made a lot of great mates at these schools, and would not change a thing If i was 11 again. Its not all about the environment, it is about the memories you make.., and I made a lot of good uns. Unfortunately not many of them fit within the constraints of the school rues

So.., I have outlined what is bad about two particular schools, and I imagine many of the above extend to public schools in general. I have however, yet to answer the question.

There is a local college near me, which my brother attended. It is one of the best colleges in the country, and is completely free. You retain your freedom, you can do what you want, you can enjoy your education, you can meet people of both sexes, and again to reiterate it is free!
What is more the academics of the college are better than that of the astute Shrewsbury School. Actually Shrewsbury School, and most public schools are distinctly average. The majority of the pupils are not clever, they simply think that school=qualifications, and if you pay to go to school, you get better qualifications. Unfortunately for them, that is not true…

A friend of mine pointed out that many top politicians went to top public schools. My response is simply that only the pompous annoying buffoons are the ones who go about shouting this fact, simply because they are under the false impression that it means something.
All those respectable politicians who went to state school don’t feel a need to shout about where they went to school to make themselves feel good.

So in conclusion, No you shouldn’t pay to school. If you do you should at least get your monies worth. Thus if you have a choice I would go state, you will more than likely come out of it better off!