The reason the State funds and mandates primary education is because it is necessary for modern taxation. Illiterate, innumerate people cannot fill out even the simplest tax forms. Schools use homework and tests to train children to spend the rest of their lives filling out paperwork for the State.

State funding of secondary education serves to capture the brightest people and direct them along avenues of research that either benefits the State or at the very least distracts them from rebellion. The State is the primary funder of academic research; it chooses what research happens and what doesn't. Student protests are now focused not on the injustices caused by the State, but on things the State has already outlawed (e.g. racism, sexism, etc).