ABSTRACT
The LEA, we believe, has the duty and capacity to affect that climate by the way it behaves towards its schools. It has to choose where to strike the balance between challenge, pressure and support. Each LEA has a different historical inheritance. In what the LEA does and how it does it, the LEA will perpetuate or change the climate it has created locally. That local climate can powerfully moderate the national climate created by legislation, the actions and voice of the DfEE (ministers and officials), the various quangos, OFSTED and by the media. Some believe that the national climate, which was one of benign neglect for many years until the late 1980s, has turned into what is best likened to a hailstorm of externally imposed change.
