ABSTRACT
This chapter indicates the legal and formal background of administration. The government of education is constantly evolving along with society itself so that any suggestion of the permanent and immutable would be misleading. The local education authorities can point out that whatever the Secretary of State's powers and duties these stem like their own from an Act of Parliament: the local education authorities are not mere outposts of a centrally directed empire. The Department exercises specific control, detailed and by now irksome, over local expenditure on new educational buildings and on improvements to existing ones. To encourage the neglect of this fact by reducing the influence of the education officer and his committee on these key sectors of finance and staff is unfortunate and potentially dangerous.
