This book was suggested to me by Alison Howson at Agenda Publishing, who had the excellent idea of asking five people to consider how far William Beveridge's assertion that five giants needed to be overcome in postwar Britain had actually happened and whether these giants had now been banished. These were Want (poverty), Disease (health), Idleness (unemployment), Squalor (housing) and Ignorance (education). I have lived through the post-Beveridge changing and expanding school system, and then worked “in education” at various levels and together with many valued colleagues and friends have researched and written about the education system in Britain and other countries. Together with many others I am sad that the education system in England, which slowly and with errors was beginning to serve all children and young people and help develop some measure of social and racial justice in our society, has been turned into a competitive, semi-privatized, profit-seeking and unjust system. Ronald Reagan, the former US president, had much admiring right-wing press coverage for his claim that “the most terrifying nine words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’ ”. In my view the five most terrifying words over the past 40 years have been “Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher”, as they were the principal architects of what became “neoliberalism”, a free-market ideology which has dominated much of the world since the 1980s and produced, in England especially, pointlessly competitive and corrupted schooling. Other postwar European countries managed to banish much ignorance in their populations through more equitable and just education, and without the often vicious denigration of a state-maintained system and its teachers, which is still in full flow in this country. It has become more difficult to find out what is actually happening in many of our schools, as they have been turned into businessoriented institutions with all the claims for confidentiality that characterize businesses. Research that might be critical of policy and practice is discouraged and much research funded by government avoids searching questions. Current claims that governments are interested in “what works” in schooling avoid the question “works for whom?”

Some intrepid writers, along with committed journalists, have managed to study and write from critical perspectives, and a number of books, articles and blogs now question what is going on.