When Sir Claus Moser said in his Presidential Address to the British Association (1990) that "central to all school problems is the state of the teaching profession", he was expressing a widely held view. The decade of the 1980s in many English-speaking countries has done little to improve the morale and work conditions of teachers in publicly provided education. The gap between the public rhetoric which acknowledge the importance of teachers and the realities which teachers experience remains very great. With reference to England and Wales this timely and critically stimulating book examines the issues which have to be addressed in the 1990s. It provides an agenda for educational policies and practices which take seriously the importance of teachers as key agents for realizing equal educational opportunities for all. This agenda has relevance for educational policy in a wide range of societies. Many of the issues raised are multicultural and international, not simply British.