ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the way in which over the past thirty years the increase in size and complexity of the education service, and the change in the power and influence of the main participants have affected the pattern of the leadership of the Chief Education Officer. The importance of politics within local government was gathering pace in the 1960s and by the time of local government reorganization in 1973 was in full flood. The political organization of the main parties became highly structured and was a dominant factor in local government policy-making, and probably no more so than in the Education Service. The concept of corporate management and corporate planning was gaining in popularity, but the infrastructure of most local authorities was hardly conducive to this approach. The Maud Committee on Management of Local Government suggested a substantial restructuring of the traditional pattern of committees, and a redistribution of executive functions.
