ABSTRACT

Local authority officers have been already been encountered, albeit indirectly, throughout this research account. Head teachers, teachers, union officers all referred to them. After the late 1980s, however, when funding was devolved from local education authorities to individual schools, their role in incompetence cases lessened, as more responsibility passed to heads and governing bodies. Although they still have a role to play, other groups see them as more in the background than the foreground.