ABSTRACT
Increasingly, however, the question of control in comprehensive schooling has become more central largely due to two developments: an attempt by outside school political and economic pressures to increase the accountability of teachers, and an attempt by teachers to increase their participation in the running of schools. Schools foster legitimate inequality through the ostensible meritocratic manner by which they reward and promote students, and allocate them to distinct positions in the occupational hierarchy. The focus of attention was upon the staff rather than the students, and the research methods included participant observation and unstructured and structured interviews. In the early 1960s, there had been a significant conjunction of the aspirations of politicians, the findings of social researchers, the theories of educationalists and adequate concomitant economic means. At the same time, the schools and teachers are asked to do more in the 'national interest', which is defined almost completely in economic terms.
