What are schools for? Who benefits from the current education system? Could children get better education by reducing the school-leaving age?

Compulsory curricula, exams and published league tables damage children's learning, disabling their critical thinking skills, and they demoralise teachers too.

This book explores how we got to here, the challenges society faces, and how a new approach to education can rise to those challenges.

Education Unbound - How to Create Educational Opportunity in Abundance homes in on why our schools and universities fail so many learners. It offers a coherent yet visionary way forward that will bring the joy back to teaching, strengthen democracy and above all, be fun. Written by educationalist James Pitt and economist Ken Webster, and with a foreword by Sir Anthony Seldon, it is aimed at concerned parents, frustrated teachers, home educators, and policy makers of all political persuasions. Inspired by radical thinkers such as Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Illich and Paulo Freire the authors place learners of all ages at the heart of education, and argue for a radical localisation of educational provision. The book provides a handle for seeing where things have gone wrong and how to build a hopeful future.