ABSTRACT
The legal and administrative framework within which managers in schools are working has changed beyond all recognition since the Education Reform Act of 1988. Before that, schools were managed within a ‘triangle of tension’, set up by the 1944 Education Act, between central government in the shape of the minister and the Department of Education and Science (DES); the local education authorities (LEAs) in the shape of elected members and LEA officers; and, the senior management in schools. This was essentially a bureaucratic framework which, it was claimed by the government and its advisers, stifled initiative and made it difficult to raise standards or to introduce new ideas.
