Education Act of I944 created an educational system comprising complex web of interdependent relationships among manifold participants-central government and local authorities, politicians and officials, teachers and inspectors, schools and parents. If Sir Toby Weaver is correct in arguing that The mode and degree of participation of different interests varies with issues [i], then it makes no sense to argue about degree of influence of each of policy-making agents in vacuo. 'efficient secret' of system, to adapt Bagehot, was that no one individual participant should enjoy a monopoly of power in decision-making process. Power over distribution of resources, over organisation and over content of education was to be diffused amongst different elements and no one of them was to be given a controlling voice. Such a structure securing a 'balance' between different interests involved was, for Lord Alexander, the envy of world [2]. It offered clear and obvious advantages not only for administrator concerned with efficient working of system but also for liberal, anxious to avoid concentration of power and pluralist, insistent that different interests are properly represented. For parallel to formal relationships between central and local government, embodied in statute and convention, there grew up a network of professional communities whose role it was to soften political antagonisms which might otherwise render system unworkable. process through which particular interest groups (such as National Association of Schoolmasters or National Union of Students), became legitimate and thus eligible for consultation, was admittedly one of more arcane mysteries of British public administration: but it did ensure that major interests involved in policy-making were consulted before decisions were taken. If result of such consultation has become in recent years less creation of an educational consensus, than a babble of discordant voices, that, perhaps, has less to do with intrinsic weakness of process of consultation, than with wider factors serving to undermine consensus. What could at least be said for structure of educational policy-making was that, if an incipient consensus did exist, process of consultation would ensure that it was actualised. A corollary of representative nature of system was that decisions took longer to reach than would have been case in a more centralised structure. Indeed, few policy initiatives in education can be carried out within lifetime of a single parliament, and it is a misconception of role of Secretary of State for Education and Science to imagine that he or she can lay down policy by fiat. Educational institutions have an organic nature . . . which even omni-competence of Parliament cannot force into conformity with electoral timetable [3]. But, in exchange for delays which could