ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the different elements operated at the local level to facilitate or impede the process of educational change. It summarises and discusses a number of the major factors that have been observed in ten case studies. The importance of the actions of individual local education authorities (LEAs) in carrying through comprehensive reorganisation in England and Wales has been well recognised, but the dynamics of the process have been relatively little studied. In that county, the Independent council was concerned primarily with encouraging the Chief Education Officer to allow a variety of schemes to be devised, in order to meet local circumstances, rather than insisting on any one scheme. There are two main issues, one concern the role of consultation as a strategy of implementation, and the other concerns the flexibility of a local authority in relation to the type of scheme that was favoured.
