ABSTRACT
Traditionally, heads have directly controlled only a tiny proportion of the financial resources of their schools. In some Local Education Authorities (LEAs) this has already changed. In all others it is about to change for heads with more than 200 pupils on roll. Primary school financial management is largely uncharted territory – there have been very few studies of how primary heads manage their financial resources. It could be that that situation will change with the advent of Local Financial Management and the requirement upon LEAs under the 1986 Education Act Section 29, to make an annual financial statement of costs to the governors of every primary school. Secretiveness refers to the way that heads tended to keep financial information to themselves, leaving teachers in the dark about how much money was available or how the money was spent. Local Financial Management represents the application of the orthodoxy in mainstream management theory to the management of schools.
