ABSTRACT
The principal sociological approaches to organisational structure have utilised the concept of bureaucracy. The approach should be particular enough to account for the special characteristics of schools as organisations, enable distinctions to be made between schools, and also account for the unique features of individual schools. The approach should enable connections to be made between the macro-sociology of education in terms of its societal aspects, and its micro-sociological aspects, including pedagogy and learning. Condition is necessary because it is recognised that schools are organisations and must therefore be susceptible to either partial analysis using approaches generated in the field of industrial sociology, or to low-level analysis using approaches formulated for the comparison of organisations. Of the many developments of the concept of bureaucracy that of Derek Pugh and his associates seemed most appropriate for an approach to the organisation of the school.
