An increasing number of adults who left school early and unfulfilled are returning to education. This book records the experiences of 21 people who took this second chance to learn - tracing their unhappy schooldays, their struggles at work, and their sense of achievement on qualification. The author uses their testimonies to highlight the benefits of mature study, and to extend the argument he first proposed in his critical analysis of education, Invisible Children, that an alarming number of children are failed by their schools.