Some friends of ours had their children in a public “junior” (whatever the poshos call those ) school, they loved the school however on thinking ahead the only “secondary” public school which admitted girls in our vicinity had monstrous fees, beyond even their fat City salaries. Given that, they thought it would be better to move their kids into state education so the transition from Junior to Secondary wasn’t such a jump.
I’m all in favour of public schools but they definitely shouldn’t have charitable status.