The article deals with starting points for a system analysis of education in the department of schools. It draws attention to the stumbling blocks of positivism and empiricism in projecting automated processing of information for directing tlie process of education. Hie application of a system approach to the direction of education makes high demands on the identification of the individual elements of the structure and the links between them as well as on the identification of mutual relationships with the system’s environment The relative independence of the individual elements of the system, the measure of freedom and the measure of integrality are in an antagonistic tension; at the same time they are a source of the motion and development of the system developing as a unity of differences. The system of education is simultaneously auto-kinetic, capable of self-regulation and self-direction. However, its qualitative determination and integrity can only be maintained if there is signsdization of relevant external and internal conditions and influences, i.e. information which is thus becoming one of the central concepts of its direction. In conclusion the system of education in the department of schools is characterized as a dynamic interaction between many variables, keeping the system’s components in continual change and growth, and also as a progressive differentiation, centralization and a rise in the level of the organization of the system with final causality. The proposed automated system of direction in education must proceed from the abovementioned characteristics.