Changes in the New South Wales Department of Education in the early 1990s were principally brought about through the implementation of recommendations of two reports - an interim report entitled School Renewal: A Strategy To Revitalise Schools Within the New South Wales State Education System (1989) and a final report, School Centred Education: Building A More Responsive State School System (1990), each chaired by Dr Brian Scott. The purpose of this study was to investigate the approach to change employed by regional representatives and field officers of the north west region to implement departmental policy changes in one-teacher schools over a period of significant structural upheaval in the New South Wales State education system. The major finding of the study was that the approach to change by senior executives of the north west region to implement policy changes in one- teacher schools employed pre-Scott ( 1989, 1990) was significantly different from the approach to change employed by senior executives post-Scott. The approaches to change evident during the three time periods of data collection may be summarised thus: pre-Scott - the general approach was one of authority in which the individual teachers- in-charge were told what to do by their superiors and were expected to show evidence of the change within six months; post-Scott 1 (June/July 1992) the general approach was one of training in which the superiors helped the individual principals to bring about the change over a period longer than two years; post- Scott 2 (June/July 1993) saw the general approach to change once again significantly alter. At this time an approach emerged in which the individual principals were encouraged by their superiors to be involved in the changes. The principals had a feeling of belonging and were expected to show evidence of implementing policy changes within one year. Analysis of data revealed that the main problems associated with getting one-teacher schools to change were the conservative nature of small school communities, the magnitude of the teaching principal's task, the isolation of many of the one- teacher schools and the lack of professional interaction. Further analysis revealed an increased maturity in relationships between superordinates and subordinates, emerging independence of principals of the one- teacher schools, a movement towards a participative management style by regional representatives and field officers and strong evidence that a major thrust of both reports of Scott to develop self managing schools was in fact emerging in the one- teacher schools of the north west region.