Whenever I point to the success of people who hardly ever, or never went to school (e.g. William Blake,  Mark Twain and Buster Keaton), I get the same reply:
"But they were exceptional people.  Others would fail."
It hardly ever occurs to anyone that they were successful because of their lack of traditional schooling, not in spite of.
John Taylor Gatto observed:
"As a teacher, I found that genius is as common as dirt."
The model of traditional schooling that most nations slavishly follow is becoming more and more anti-educational, more fixated on the academic side, and long ago became huge factories for producing tomorrow's workforce.
As I have said before, children are naturally curious and, largely left to their own devices, will learn far more than in school.  And they would, most importantly, love learning instead of loathing it.
The basic tools of learning are literacy and numeracy.  Once they are accomplished, the world is yours.  Like the keyboard of a piano, once you learn the keys and scales, you can compose anything.  Once you have learned how to drive, you can go anywhere.
Yet, even with literacy and numeracy, schools are failing terribly.  For children not to be able to read and write by the age of 10, reveals what poor teaching they have experienced.  I exclude children with certain conditions and learning difficulties.
With any luck, in the distant future I fear, school will be a thing of the past.