(nope, no joke. This is a company in Germany preparing students for their A'levels.)
Since there are many different groups and movements involved within the "International Students Movement", I thought it would be interesting to actually discuss our vision of public education.
What functions should public education systems serve?
A few months ago a person tried to kick off a similar discussion on this forum before.
Let me begin with my vision, which consists of mainly two blocks:
1st: ACCESS
This is the most obvious problem many people around the world are struggling against: limited access to public education. Worldwide education is being commodified with the introduction of tuition fees. In some countries it even costs thousands of dollars to gain the privilege of having access to higher education (usually in universities). There are also other admission restrictions, such as a certain Grade Point Average (GPA) [Numerus Clausus], grades during A'levels, working experience or special skills (e.g. foreign languages), sometimes even personal interviews.
I believe there should be NO restrictions. Every person should be able to have access to any public educational institution anytime they want to (as long as they are open).
Public Education should be accessible to all!!
2nd: DEPENDENCE
I see any public (and even most private) space as a battle field. It is a battle field for all sorts of interest groups. This matters especially in areas where people are socailized and particular attitutes [e.g. values] are mediated. The public education system plays a key role in this. People spend many years within that system. Therefore analysing whose interests are actually being promoted and propagated within it is of major importance. Teachers and professors [and their curricular] have a great influence on how we view society[-ies] and the world in general. Even in kindergarten values are already being mediated.
Therefore I want public education systems to primarily serve the interests of the public instead of the interests of private businesses, particular state interests [e.g. conserving existing power structures] or be just viewed as a means to produce human capital for the labour market.
To me public education is very closely linked and a pre-condition for a democratic society. But it can't be any public education system. It must be a free and emancipatory public education system, which is accessible to anybody anytime!
A public education system which enables students to critically reflect and learn to understand [at least certain aspects of] and question their immediate environment, various tool of manipulation [used by the most powerful actors: the state and corporate actors] and the power structures surrounding them.
How can any society claim to be democratic, if it does not ensure, that at least every individual has access to such fundamental knowledge, which enables him/her to understand society and the world better??
As long as states and business interests have such great influences on public education systems as they do now, we should also not believe, that we live in a democratic society.
What do you think?
get connected: 
Knowledges should be shared, not sold.
Just like you, I think that the access to public education should not be restricted in no way : everybody should be able to learn whatever the money they have, the skill they have. I think that everybody should have the possibility to learn what they want, and whenever they want.
Knowledge is a beautiful thing which should only exist to be shared, and that should not be sold (it does not exactely deals with education, but I totally disagree whith the principle of patents, that make laboratories work separately when they could work together and share their discoveries to find important cures), so there should be no tuition fees, books should be free, etc. But this is an ideal (yeah, I know, for books, it'll happen to be hard to make them all free, but I dislike money : I think the whole world should live without it !).
Today, education exists to give you a place in your society. The system is done to make education a bridge for your future life. This is why you have programs, and this is why you have people to check if those programs are followed. I don't know exactely when this process has begun, but society is now made in a way that force you to study medecine only if you want to be a doctor. You can't do it just for fun. They can't accept everybody, they don't want to accept everybody, because it costs money. And since they want to have good doctors, they must accept in their universities only those who have the diploma that "proofs" they are able to follow the courses they will follow in this cursus.
So, when you say : "I believe there should be NO restrictions.", I agree, but I think this is an idealized vision of education, because there is at least the restrictoin of diplomas. You also denounce the following : "There are also other admission restrictions, such as a certain Grade Point Average (GPA) [Numerus Clausus], grades during A'levels, working experience or special skills (e.g. foreign languages), sometimes even personal interviews." and I totally agree with you : such restrictions should not exist. And I think that those things can be changed (depending on the goodwill of the next gouvernments). But education itself is already too profoundly anchored in the society to be totally changed soon. It has to be emancipatory, but since the gouvernment controls it, it can't be. Perhaps should there be an independent institution for education...But how create it ? If you manage to have free tuition fees for all, good. In my opinion, if universities and schools become independent places where to share knowledges only, better. But it'll be hard to establish, cus it'll take time to reorganize the system completely. I don't even know if we will be here to see it.
But lets' dream, this is something that is still free !
I think education is something without which you can't grow up, since it is the thing that enables you to understand the world. It is an exchange between those who know, whoever they are, and those who want to know, an exchange between those who try and understand the world, and those who can't understand it very well yet. So, universities should be places where all those who know (teachers, researchers, advanced students, or just people with knowledges) teach to those who want to learn (children, students, parents, prisoners). The firsts explain their vision of politics, nature, literature, etc. to the seconds, and they all discuss about it, so that the learners keep a critical eye, and learn to learn by themselves. Besides, learners can use the libraries, with or without the internet, to read and acquire knowledges by themselves, and to have other visions of the studied subject.
Education should make possible the critic of the past and the present, for the improvement of the future. So, it has to be emancipated, independent. Neither politics nor businessmen should be able to control it. It has to explain to you that other political / economical systems used to exist, it has to show you the defaults of the current systems, so that you can think of a better one.
The goal of education is achieved when the students can walk alone on the way of knowledge : they don't trust everything they hear, they always search the truth by themselves, they study the society, try and find its dangers, and how to make it better for the future generations. It is achieved when they don't only think about themselves, their little life, in their little home, with their little family and their little job : education learns you that there are people who need help all over the world, as well as next to our home, when you are opened to the world, when you act for your earth's good health and not for the economic world's one.
Well, here you are ! Not really organized ideas, but I think I told most of what I wanted to say :-)