By the twilight of this century, unbeknown to parents, the education
system has become a dystopian drug-fuelled sham. Children with
scintillated eyes attend the high-performing grammar academies of the
Central Area. Those who fail the Four-Plus are forcibly displaced to the
dilapidated shanty towns of the Periphery.
Zade, a fiercely independent school-refuser, is on a mission to uncover
what causes scintillation. She discovers others who secretly share her
alarm, combining forces with Central Area School commissioner, Alexandra
Essex, with figureheads from the education underground, and with
five-year-old, Lucas Patel, whose family has been displaced to the
Periphery because his younger brother Noah failed to scintillate.
As Zade's understanding grows, so does her determination to restore
empathy and ethics to this dehumanising regime. Can Zade, homeless and
powerless, expose the sophisticated 'con-trick' perpetrated by the
education elite? Can she, against the odds, end the drug-dependency and
end scintillation itself, releasing millions of unknowing families from
its grasp?