Quality Control in Education? The Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the British Educational Management and Administration Society (9th, Glasgow, Great Britain, September 1980).

An introduction, keynote address, and 12 selected papers present the conference's proceedings. Also provided are summaries of the seven other conference papers and of the final plenary session, along with a list of conference participants. The keynote address questions whether quality control is possible in education. It notes that the concept of quality control needs broadening to be applied to education and that the educational processes of recognition (or credentialing), assessment, and intervention help widen the definition of quality control. The next five papers discuss the roles of the national government, school boards, regional advisory councils, and local educational agencies in England in educational quality control. The following section's three papers ponder the problems involved in improving education through staff development. These look at further (or adult) education institutions, management-staff conflict, and participative management in elementary and secondary schools. Two further papers review the "politics" of educational quality control, particularly the problems of value judgments in assessing quality and of teachers' reactions to school amalgamations that threaten jobs. Cost-benefit analysis is used in the final two papers to examine the costs of local educational inspectors and to suggest a method of monitoring educational efficiency. (Author/RW)