ABSTRACT
There are two central issues. First is the relationship between policy and practice. It is all too easy to write as if teachers and schools obeyed policy word for word. They do not. The Tory government has since 1979 put great efforts into trying to ensure that its education policies are followed carefully. To that end the National Curriculum is enshrined in law; In-service training policy is governed by categorical funding (see McBride, 1989) which steers money to certain types of activity and so on. If we take the latter it is clear that neither schools nor HE providers obey the rules completely. For example, I recently visited a school which was ostensibly having a maths in-service training day used the money in the maths Inset budget for a drama day because that was what the staff wanted. There are numerous HE courses which existed prior to the days of categorical funding which are unchanged but renamed as ‘The Management of…’ because there is Inset money for management training.
