ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the global and national contexts that are driving education reform and also the implications of these on leaders in schools. It provides an overview of the key aspects to understand the Australian and English education contexts. Granting schools more control, authority and flexibility in relation to governance aims to generate more effective, responsive and innovative education systems. School autonomy is a form of restructuring that acts as a policy-steering mechanism by a process of the decentralisation of decision-making away from the centralised distribution of resources to one where schools are given more autonomy to make certain decisions. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has identified the links between socio-economic background and educational outcomes as being stronger in Australia than they are in many other comparable countries. Effective or good leadership has increasingly been presented as the solution to many of education's pressing problems.
