ABSTRACT
This chapter examines certain sources of external pressure on the politicians, civil servants and local authority administrators. It reviews the Campaign for the Advancement of State Education (CASE). About half Britain's teachers belong to the National Union of Teachers (NUT). The methods that the NUT employs to influence policy are various. They include direct dealing with departmental officials, deputations to Ministers, planted parliamentary questions and membership of official working parties. Since the mid-1970s, however, the almost automatic assumption of high growth that existed before has been challenged by the circumstances. The chapter also examines the view that the NUT has taken of some of the relevant policy areas, namely, nursery education, positive discrimination, the abolition of selective schools and the raising of the school-leaving age. In so doing, it will from time to time touch on the professional/union conflict. Both CASE and the NUT seem likely to go on being part of what Kogan has called 'the progressive consensus'.
