Ways to deal with Famous/Broken schools
One of the strategies that my co-GM and I have been discussing is to fiddle with the availablility of the Know the School skill. According to flavor text, this skill is usually limited to people who have trained with or fought against members of the selected schools. However, it makes sense that the strategies of the famous schools would be easily available to students of other schools. For example: Only someone training with or fighting against the Daidoji Harriers is likely to learn Know the School: Daidoji Harrier, but every courtier knows of the skill of the Doji in court, so Know the School: Doji Courtier should be available at almost every courtier dojo in the land (and even a few bushi dojo). Considering how low powered Know the School actually is, this is unlikely to act as a true equalizer - but we're finding that it does help somewhat.

Awareness caps out v's a low know the school once you get to awareness 5 though. And good courtiers should get to awareness 5. I allow know the school to let them know school techniques etc. VERY useful for say a scorpion to combat an asahina sohei... want to deal with him have some fake monks attack him... if he attacks them he loses honour, if he doesnt...well you pwn him! (based on knowing asahina is honour tech etc) There are weaknesses to almost every school (except the tsuruchi) that can be gamed against...know the school means its not metagame Same as Lore:clan. I use scorpion as a case in point... overly powerful shinbi? A little lore:scorpion and suddenly we know about them.... and can deal with them on their terms! etc

My homebrew of this problem : Know the school mastery ability rank 5 : you gain the double benefits from the Know the school skill. And yes Tsuruchi are unfortunetly legal but you can easily cut their power off by making a called shot at their bow.

Now there are a Ba-jillion schools available for people to take, so Know the School becomes even more limited in its usefulness. Although I recommend Know the School for any Matsu. The TN bonus works when you are in Full Attack, unlike Defence's.

By the rules, Know the School skill is not great, except for handling metagaming. However, I combined it with Lore: Clan and allowed a character benefits via emphasis.

Don't forget that the Know the School also gives you insight, where spending the XP on Awareness doesn't always give you the insight unless you also spend the same amount on Reflexes. A "know the clan" might be better.

In games where exp isn't thrown out like candy and where your Gm creates a sense of urgency, when needing the appropriate skills,etc to survive than the fact that you can buy the ranks of KTS one at a time is a big advantage. Having to spend a minimum of twelve exp to raise your awareness is a big chunk of exp to expend at once whereas 1-3 exp for a smaller but immediate gain can be useful. Also KTS for courtier schools helps not only with Awareness rolls, but with various Willpower, Intelligence, and Perception rolls as well. Buying up Awareness will help you with your ettiquette and political manuevering to be sure, but KTS helps with not only that but intimidation, lying, percieving lies, and outright contests of knowledge. I don't think that know the school is bad at all if one knows, when it is appropriate to buy it, and when it isn't.