ABSTRACT
Large schools, small classes and open-plan architecture may increase the power of headmasters and reduce that of their assistants. Until the middle of the nineteenth century the typical school was 'open-plan' in the sense that all the pupils and their teachers worked in a single, unpartitioned room or hall. 'The boss who has many subordinates is likely to be more powerful than the boss who has few; the boss who can see his subordinates is more powerful than the boss who cannot. The assistant teacher is likely to lose power on both counts; and moreover, while schools grow in size, the class diminishes. Bureaucracy has many faces; they are not all inevitable accompaniments of size. A disproportionate increase in the proportion of administrative staff is commonly taken as an indicator of bureaucratization. Two other features of bureaucracy may be more closely associated with organizational size: the hierarchical structure of authority and the application of impersonal rules.
