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The gap between industry and education should be a cause of concern to both sides. Employers too often see the gap as the failure of the education system to meet the needs of employment. This narrow view, however, is both arrogant and lacking in an appreciation of the full extent of the problem. It takes two sides to create a gap and in this case industry must accept its share of blame for the poor co‐operation and understanding which exists between education and the world of work.

The Working Mathematics Group, a voluntary body which works on a shoestring budget mostly raised its own efforts, has a proud record of achievement. Yet it looks like moving into a crisis condition towards the end of this year for lack of financial support. While this is happening the MSC is proposing to invade the field of preparing open learning materials by some sort of bureaucratic system to be paid for out of public funds. In this journal, in our Phoenix Series, we argue that what is required is the reverse of this situation: we need to harness local effort, and voluntary effort, especially when it happens also to be expert effort, in the service of the community — a feature which WMG illustrates to perfection — and move away from organising everything from the centre by highly‐paid career bureaucrats in the manner of the MSC and the Ministries. Now read the inside story from the point of view of the WMG. One lesson is that the disbursement of funds from the public purse to the various agents working to restore the country's prosperity is not really co‐ordinated by any part of the system: one Ministry seems not to know what the others are doing in areas of mutual interest and responsibility. Another lesson is that surely voluntary bodies, with their economical way of working, their ability to address themselves to real problems and their capacity to draw on a corps of dedicated workers giving their services free, should be protected from being driven out of business by the civil service empire builders. (Editor)