Actually, if we were honest and not driven by ideology of any type, Government funding for schooling children should stop at year six.
Throwing tax payer funds at the uneducable is bad policy.

Intriguingly parents of high net worth, maybe be contributing with the taxes that they pay. However some may already qualify for benefits because of how they arrange their taxation affairs.

diver dan,
Despite what you claim, your comments are driven by ideology. And it's a particularly stupid and shortsighted ideology. An educated workforce is far more productive than an uneducated one, so the cost of education will be returned many times over through the taxation system.

Dismissing people as uneducable is bad policy.

Largely agree with this sentiment David, and add, our charity is for the needy, not the greedy!

Arguably, all education funding be made, with the assistance of a means tested endowment adjusted for disability/remote locations.

Meaning limited education budget could go far further, provide reasonable support right up to a tertiary qualification/the only means of lifting whole families out of postcode poverty traps.
While ensuring that the cream rose to the top, rather than?

It would allow up to 30% of this limited budget to escape the fee charging middleman/state government bureaucracy ensuring funding was no longer routed through them, thereby ccompelling regional autonomy!

Thus liberating the student, the parents and school principals from the semi socialist controls of the confining union movement, thus allowing incompetent teachers to contaminate kids?

Resulting in a significant percentage leaving education illiterate?

Just not good enough given the tragedies going somewhere to happen that this underclass is destined to become.

We confront a future here as many as 90% of current occupations will be largely automated; and kids will need to excel in both maths and science to have any career prospects! The nation's prospects, served by the best most able, rather than the most privileged/pampered!

Taking wealthy hands out of the nation's till, may well allow tertiary education to be fee free once again, for the genuinely disadvantaged?

And who could not want that and the level playing field that would result? Particularly if the endowment increased with age and included a realistic living away from home, means tested allowance, for country/remote location kids?

Now, if we could just outlaw commissions and middlemen profit takers, we could conceivably half the cost of living/doing business!
As well as take some of the confected heat out of a housing market, that supports far too many parasitical players!

Which should remain an essential human right to affordable shelter rather than investments attracting economy harming, debt laden, tax avoiding, profit repatriating, foreign speculators!
Alan B.

personally I would get rid of the public system. It would save billions and lift the standards of education by a long way.

runner, where did you receive your own education?

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Alan B.,
The services provided by the government are NOT charity.

The education budget does not have to be set so low, and the rich are far more likely to resent paying taxes when they're excluded from the benefits. What you propose would likely result in a lot of pressure to cut the education budget further.