ABSTRACT
In the discussion of the school as a complex organisation we have seen that the bureaucratic and the contingency models have lost a good deal of power to explain variations in school structure. This is not to say that these models are completely useless. If one knows how to interpret the stages of development in a school system, or the particular patterns of communication that are likely to be affected by a team teaching arrangement, then they can be quite illuminating. It is just that there is so much activity in schools which falls outside of this rational, goal-directed approach. Can anyone claim that schools are co-ordinated and governed as formal organisations when so much of the variation in centralisation and supervisory style can be due to the idiosyncrasies of the principal or headteacher? What hope can there be for developing a rationally articulated technology when teachers can close themselves off physically from their colleagues, even in an open-plan school? What claim does teaching have to being a peer-governed profession when there is very little collegiate control over entry to it? When teaching careers depend more on support of superiors than of colleagues then the technical roots of professional practice must seem to be very shallow indeed.
