@erolz:
I couldn't catch up on these discussions on public schools. Certainly I agree completely that your old school is not a charity, and if there are more schools in the UK like that, they should be deprived the "charity status".
Private schools in Cyprus are not really better than public schools. Not even the English school.
On the average the Private schools here are just... average.
Their average graduate however is better than the average graduate of a Public school, simply because the latter concentrate a lot of junk.
Top students can excel in any of the two. in fact when I was a student in a public school (Greek) our top student (now a professor at Harvard) beat the English school 2 years in a row at the Toath Masters debate (in English). Imagine that...
What I am totally against are the so called
"prestigious schools" that become "prestigious" by a) concentrating the best brains in one place and b) applying tremendous pressure on students to keep the standard high. I was unlucky enough to be accepted at such a University, until I transferred to a normal one after 18 months of almost total nervous breakdown. Looking at the graduates of that "prestigious Uni", well, they would all get higher starting salaries and perhaps better careers, but I you care to dig deeper, most became social failures, delivering unstable families and children.
Mind you when I was at High school we did have experiments in Cyprus to create prestigious Public high schools.The recipe was always the same. Concentrate the best students in one place and apply enormous pressure. And they did successfully create a couple until the Ministry interfered and cancelled the project.
So Erolz let those rich to super rich have those "prestigious schools" in the UK, thinking they can buy better education and better future.
There is a very fine line separating normal education to oppressive and destructive education -I am sure you know that better than anyone else. Let them take the road of their own self destruction.
) in the garden loo. We used to dreeeeeeeeeaaaaaam about going to the university of life. 
