What is public education

What is public about Public Education? Before we go to that question, we can safely reaffirm that there is a wide and growing agreement now on the usage of language, that what were called Public Schools in UK and India, are private schools, mostly for the economically well-off and not included in the ambit of Public Education in any way. Schools that are funded by tax revenues generated by the State and administered (‘managed’, ‘run’) by the State are called Public Schools. Here I use schools in a broad sense, to include educational institutions from pre-primary levels to college. The word ‘State’ includes its various organs, even those which may have a fairly autonomous nature, but are eventually part of the State system. The funding may have some element of resources that are raised by the school itself, through fees and other sources, but is substantially provided by the state from its tax revenues. Such a system of Public Schools is what constitutes Public Education