ABSTRACT
A picture has been built up of the prevalence, characteristics and diversity of operation of senior management teams in large primary sector schools. The survey of headteachers provided a way into the world of primary school SMTs and suggested that they have become a central component of management structures in most of these institutions. They represent, in part, a response to expansion of management tasks in a high-risk environment of increasing external accountability brought by central government reforms. The four case studies of SMTs whose members professed a commitment to a team approach to management enabled details of teamwork to be explored from the differing perspectives of key players, backed by limited observation of SMTs at work. A combined cultural and political perspective on interaction has been employed as a tool for understanding the complexities of what goes on inside the SMTs and between their members and other staff. The largely qualitative research design was intended to enable the phenomenon of primary school SMTs to be examined in some depth, not to provide a basis for generalisation about the typical SMT.
