In a world increasingly characterised by change, diversity and complexity, with educational institutions, like others, aspiring to become "learning organisations" and where the "knowledge economy" is apparently crucial, schools as workplaces for learning appear to remain peculiarly static. The majority exhibit physical, organisational and social arrangements that have changed relatively little in the last 150 years. Despite the burgeoning spatial metaphors there is a lack of consideration of space in education (Clarke, 2002). This article however argues that an understanding of the nature of space is critical to an understanding of what goes on in schools. Common conceptions of space as a fixed, physical, container for social interaction are inadequate for this. Indeed, the silences around space allow it to be organised to produce and reproduce practices which maintain persistent and unequal power relations. Understanding space as "socially produced" reveals current social arrangements which maintain and ossify such power relations, but which can then be contested and changed. Following a brief discussion of the new understandings of space and the relationship with power, the article outlines the significance of space in the organisation of the majority of schools, beginning with a description of the genesis and history of "the classroom" in England. The spatial relationships of teachers and pupils in the classroom is examined to show how space is used to create and maintain particular forms of relationship, and this is illustrated by a study of the spatiality of two secondary schools. (Contains 3 figures.)