School Wars The Battle for Britain's Education

Since the 1960s, Britain's politicians have been promising equal educational opportunities for all but consistently failing to deliver. Now, with the rise of academies and free schools, new forms of inequality and discord afflict the nation's classrooms. The Coalition Government is further fragmenting and privatising the nation's school system, making a mockery of their claims to promote social mobility. In this coruscating analysis of the games politicians play with our children's futures, Melissa Benn puts forward a genuinely comprehensive vision and points the way to restoring the educational values of equity and excellence.

Melissa Benn is a journalist, novelist and campaigner. She has written for the Guardian, the New Statesman, Public Finance, Cosmopolitan and the London Review of Books, among many others. Her writing on education includes Education and Democracy, co-edited with Clyde Chitty, and A Comprehensive Future: Quality and Equality for All Our Children, written with Fiona Millar. A regular broadcaster and speaker, she is a founder member of the Local Schools Network, set up to support local schools and to counter media misinformation about their achievements and the challenges they face. In spring 2012 she won the Fred and Anne Jarvis award in recognition of her outstanding individual contribution for a fairer education system.