Nationalization of Education: The Best Way Forward?

The grand majority of Western civilization lives under a capitalist government, meaning that the means of production are predominantly owned by private corporations operating for profit. The pinnacle of Capitalist society would, of course, be the United States of America, a society so inherently vehement against all forms of social community and corporate responsibility. This is probably the reason that it has carved it's place as the world's largest economy.
Closer to home however, privatization of public services gained a huge victory when in 1993 the British Conservative government, led by John Major, passed a legislation allowing the privatization of British Rail. Since then it's been an uphill climb that has continued with the Labour Government (AKA New Tory), allowing more private corporations to actively contract themselves for various elements of public services.
While we can't deny that in some cases, privatization has done varying degrees of good, there are various problems that we receive when we accept privatization into public services.

Education

The privatization of national education poses several major problems, the most predominate being:

• The fact that anyone can found a private school, regardless of their previous experience in the field of education. These schools can be founded for many reasons, one such worrying reason being personal profit and capitalization on the necessity to obtain an education in modern society.
• Privatized schools have the ability to abstain from any kind of national watchdog such as Ofsted, meaning that if a private school so choses, they can avoid any type of national scrutiny concerning the management of their budget, the competence of their staff and the general standards of the school. On the upside, most private schools are indeed very good schools where the level of education is considerably higher than their nationalized counterparts.
  

As a slight bracket, I'll relate my previous point to a personal experience of mine when I was living in Rome. I attended St. George's British International School in Rome for five years. My father taught there, as well.
The principal of said school (though not the founder), a Mrs Bridget Gardener OBE was somewhat of an eccentric personality, though the school went to the dogs during her tenure. First of all, the induction rates were amazingly high. In fact the fees are the following:

1. A one-time registration fee of €1,200
2. An additional induction fee that ranges from €9,150 (nursery school) to €17,250 per year per child
3. A lunch fee of €1,030
4. A re-registration fee of €450
5. A book-deposit fee of €400

Teachers at this school were payed around €1500 a month. So where did the rest of this money go? The school was (and still is) heavily in debt, over the course of five years they sold the swimming pool, the nursery complex (taking up more space in the Junior School campus), half of the exercise field and a good part of the school grounds, all to pay debts.
Secondly, Gardener would employ teachers even though they didn't have the sufficient qualifications required. My German teacher was hired simply because Gardener had a 'thing' for him. Luckily for me, he was a great teacher.

• Privatized schools do not have to follow a national education syllabus. This means that they could be teaching children that Jesus Christ made dinosaurs, and it wouldn't matter. Example: Reg Vardy, former used car salesman, now a founder of several christian schools

So what exactly would be the benefits of a widespread nationalization of all schools?

• Nationalization cuts out the need of ridiculously high school fees: the schools are provided for and financed by the government, meaning that taxpayer's money is being put to good use securing an education for future generations. Parents would instead be paying the things that are really necessary, such as school lunches and a book deposit. This also means that schools won't be in financial trouble, as they can rely on the government to provide for them.
  
• Nationalization also forces every school in the country to undergo regular inspection by an independent government watchdog such as Ofsted in order to determine whether or not a school is performing up to national standards.
• Nationalization obliges schools to follow a national syllabus laid out by the Minister of Education. Having said that, a syllabus is only as good as the Minister of Education who plans it.
• And perhaps the most important reason of all: schools in a national network are not founded for profit. They are there to help your child gain the best possible future and to help them develop a cultural and social education.

While both sides have strong points and weak points (and please be aware, this is a biased article), I do believe that nationalization is the most sensible way forward, and one hell of a kick in the gonads to the capitalist society we now live in.