ABSTRACT

As a new headteacher starting in September 1982 but appointed at the end of April, I had the advantage of being aware of what I was undertaking, but the disadvantage of not having taken a personal part in the negotiations preceding the implementation of local financial management (LFM). It was in fact the chance to be involved in this scheme which was one of the major attractions of the post. While head of a comprehensive school in Oxfordshire, I had been becoming increasingly concerned about the need for greater financial autonomy and had been advocating that experiments should be tried out. To arrive in a Local Education Authority (LEA) which was actually putting into practice what I had been thinking about as a theoretical and rather remote hope was an exciting prospect and brought me to Cambridgeshire full of great expectations.