The high school students who have enough time and intelligence to attend a rigorous school like Oxford and do all of the homework it requires are the ones capable of going to a less rigorous school and putting that homework time into something else that they enjoy.

Some kids want that out of a school environment though. As a kid I was always intensely curious, pretty good at school and really enjoyed being in class and learning things in a formalized school environment. I would’ve been bored as hell during the day at my local mediocre public high school - I wanted to be in class with other kids who were engaged and wanted to be there, not have more time to become a “teen inventor” or whatever. A scholarship to a very academically focused private high school was the best thing that could’ve happened to me because it allowed me to learn in an environment like that. I went on to be a normal college kid at a state school who drank too much sometimes and did dumb stuff and got good but not amazing grades, I don’t feel like I missed out on much tbh.

Also despite being nowhere near the smartest or most high achieving kid in my class in high school, when I got to college I was objectively better prepared than like 95% of my classmates were for college level work, especially in English and history.