Like all things when the workers seize power, I think socialist education needs to be built and we need to accept that we cannot change it overnight to a theoretically idealistic system. It’s likely that this will look different in both process and end-goals in different implementations of socialism across the world based on the needs and other material aspects of society such as culture and approaches. It’s also likely to continue to change and evolve with these needs and cultures.

In my country (Great Britain / UK) I see the following as immediate concerns for a socialist government to begin addressing (in no particular order / simultaneously):

• Better pay for teachers and other educational staff – teachers are woefully underpaid in Britain. This can be addressed very quickly with reallocation of funds, which in turn would presumably become more and more available as the state closes tax loop-holes and seizes assets from capitalists. There are also a multitude of other educational staff such as librarians, people we call “teaching assistants”, and probably a whole bunch of roles I’m unaware of that should also be compensated appropriately.
• Seizing private schools – there are private schools in Britain and they are perceived to have a better quality of education due to more resources acquired from their private funding structure. It’d be a logical step to seize these as assets and return them to public hands. This goes double for places like Eton. Seize it and return it. Remove its ability to support and perpetuate the Capitalist class.
• Reversing academisation – in Britain there has been a great push first under the neoliberal Blairite New Labour regime and now under the (also neoliberal, kinda fascist) Conservative regime to convert schools into “Academies”. This removes them from local authority control and establishes a “funding agreement” directly with the Department of Education. While central government funding is good in concept, the result of this is that local authorities (and therefore local people) have less and less power. There is also the case where “academy trusts”, basically non-profit companies, can be established and run several schools. This effectively privatises the UK mandatory school system, and sets the groundwork for a pay-to-learn system once the government decides the time is right to withdraw funding. Reversing this process alongside rebuilding proper local democratic power and establishing progressive federalism to enable participation in a central government would result in greater local power over education.
• Removing faith schools – There’s a weird thing in Britain where “Catholic Schools” seem to offer better overall quality of education but it comes at the cost of basically having a compromised education in particular topics (Religious studies and sex education are examples) and having to start attending church. I’d need to check this but I think they mostly exist as Academies so they might be dealt with by the above process, but otherwise they’d need to be seized as assets and integrated into the Local Authority education system and brought in line with the rest of the schools on particular topics.
• Improving working conditions in schools – I accept that “working conditions” is a very broad term, but I think that there is a bare minimum starting point which can be arrived at through co-operation and engagement with staff at schools and their unions to understand what needs to be done. Things like training and hiring additional teachers to reduce workload and class sizes and create room for longer breaks. I think this would be a slightly more medium-term process achieved over perhaps half a decade due to the need to encourage people back into the profession or attract people to do it in the first place, after decades of having it attacked by the government.
• Heavily subsidised food for staff and students – mandatory education is a wide-reaching entry point for short-to-medium term responses to problems arising from poverty such as malnutrition. Provision of healthy free or heavily subsidised meals distributed via schools would reach a large number of children. Provision of a three staple meals a day through schools for those who need it would be an obvious first step to take.
• Heavy investment in facilities and provision of equipment – as other comrades have pointed out here, this doesn’t necessarily mean technology wholesale. Things like space, additional classrooms, updating physical infrastrucure, provision of basic education materials to both teachers and students would likely be a good first step.
• Integration of mental health services – the British school system can be incredibly violent and traumatic (alongside other violent and traumatic results of capitalism experienced outside of school). This is a really knotty problem and one that likely has a lot of causes. Bringing in dedicated, specialist, well-paid and well-supported, mental health services for students which intregrate as seamlessy as possible into the school experience may be a good entry point for supporting students with their immediate mental health needs as well as generating body of professionals to begin providing front-line reporting on what students are saying is causing their mental health issues. Findings should of course be integrated as material for making other structural interventions across Britain outside/inside the educational system.

Once the above is achieved, I think we’d have a traditional education system but one which is not experiencing a constant crisis and is at least actually attempting to provide an education to students. Further things to consider at this stage:

• Remove imperialist and colonialist apologism and framings from education plans – self explanatory and arguably should be an immediate concern listed above. I’ve put it here because I believe that the British public as-is would be skeptical about government interference in schools and would need to see the proof of the good work above before being ready for this. It may simply be that this needs to be dismantled a bit more slowly, rather than having sweeping changes to the curriculum. Learning about the horrors of the British colonial and imperialist projects. Reframing “heroes” such as Churchill by revealing the truth of his actions and values. Etc etc.
• Democratisation of the workplace – I have less of an idea how this would work in schools or even what would be the most appropriate; but roles such as Heads of Department and Head Teachers (Principals) should either be re-thought entirely if necessary or at least distributed democratically through practices of workplace democracy or via participation of citizens in Local Authority democratic processes.
• Integration of Youth Workers as support staff – I’ve spent a lot of time around Youth Work charities in Britain and they successfully deal with a lot of children and young people who are excluded from education or otherwise don’t participate or are “lost causes”. Basically “the naughty kids”. There are different approaches to Youth Work in Britain and I have my favourites, but what I’m getting at here is that things in British education like bullying or “disruptive children” must be approached holistically or from various angles. Youth Workers are inherently trained to deal with the young people who suffer from and in-turn perpetuate these conditions in schools. There’s a lot of relationship rebuilding to be done on this front in Britain as Youth Workers don’t trust schools (for good reason) and schools currently don’t take Youth Workers seriously (at least not for the most part). Allowing a way for Youth Workers to interface or integrate into the education system will provide knowledge exchange as well as immediate relief for acute problems in certain circumstances.
• Outreach and integration to home-schoolers – given the utter state of British public education at the moment I can understand why many choose not to send their child to school but it does come with its own problems. Outreach should be done to these people to rebuild their trust in the education system as part of and during any reforms with the initial goal of removing these barriers and reintegrating the young people to the education system.

Other things I cannot suggest on specifically or have only had simple notions about:

• Rebuild pedagogical approaches – I am not a trained teacher but I’ve taken a light interest in pedagogy so please correct any misunderstandings I have. I’m usually drawn to Freire’s Critical Pedagogy as an entry point for how to reframe education. I think this would be a longer-term effort but one that pays dividends in achieving a better way of growing and sharing human knowledge.
• Teaching Dialectic and Historical Materialism – theory and practice. Teaching students how to do this type of thinking to come up with their own analyses and to critically examine the analyses of others can only be a good thing.
• Lifetime access to education – No idea with this would look like in practice or the specific needs of people at the moment. I’d like to see the ability for people to have the option for continuously accessing new material about things they’ve either learned previously during mandatory education or topics that are new to them. As well as being emotionally, mentally, and spiritually fulfilling for a human’s desire to learn and grow; this system would need to encompass the capacity to retrain workers from sectors of the economy which are either automated into needing minimum worker oversight or are replaced entirely (ie fossil fuels dying away).
• Reframing the “School -> College -> University” pipeline – British Higher Education is also broken, which I think is outside of the scope of this thread. In British schools Colleges (also known as 6th forms) cover education from the ages of 16 to 18 (give or take the age of someone resitting a year) and while experiences may vary, my experience and that of my peers was certainly “this is a stepping stone to University which is basically your passport to middle-classdom”. The only alternatives presented are vocational courses. I’m not sure what the experience of those on vocational courses is, but there was a dismissive attitude about them when I was at 6th form. Higher education is valuable but this attitude needs sorting out and there needs to be a variety of pathways in and out of the schooling system to the workplace and Higher Education so it’s not presented as a binary and fate-deciding final choice. I think this touches more on what other comrades have suggested around lifetime education and going back to school.