ABSTRACT
Local government is one of the favourite scapegoats for the defects in our educational provision. Much of the criticism is unfair and most of it unconstructive. In higher education and amongst secondary schools there is a kind of caste system in which local authority control is an important dividing line. In education, as in other social services, emphasis on organisation has tended to place a greater value on co-ordination than on field-work, and has given a superior status to the language of co-ordinators, a language that stems from those who co-ordinate the co-ordinators. A common planning language between teachers and administrators, and one that would also be meaningful to the intelligent layman, would be an important advance. Education committees, which are of course largely made up of councillors, are often in even worse straits than other committees.
