This paper provides an Australian perspective on successful school leadership that focuses on case studies in two states (Tasmania and Victoria). Case studies for each state were developed independently and are reported separately. Two models of successful school leadership are outlined and compared, with the models showing a remarkable degree of commonality demonstrating that the core aspects of successful school leadership can be identified in ways that can help explain the complexity of principal leadership that leads to improved student outcomes. Both studies showed the significant contributions principals made to schools particularly in the areas of capacity building, and teaching and learning. Characteristics and qualities of the principals identified showed a common and consistent set of personal traits, behaviours, values and beliefs such as honesty and openness, highly developed communication skills, flexibility, commitment, passion, empathy with others, a sense of ‘innate goodness’, supporters of equity and social justice, belief that all children are important and can succeed, being other centred, high expectations, and a belief that schools can make a difference.

School education in Australia is a complex interplay between federal and state governments, and between government and non-government schools. This article explores the supervision of schools in Australia through school accountability systems. Utilising publicly available documents, a systematic analysis of the state and territory systems for government schools is provided. A conceptual framework utilising contractual, moral and professional accountability is used to analyse the different accountability processes reported upon. The non-government sector is complicated by the diversity of schools and the different requirements from controlling bodies. Trends in school supervision of Catholic schools are explored as an illustrative example of non-government schools. It is evident that contractual and moral accountability is met through most systems and that professional accountability is not featured. When compared to leading-edge systems, Australian accountability systems are lacking in judgements on teaching practice in individual classrooms, and the use of sophisticated measures of learning and value-added analysis.