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Some leadership practices are useful in almost all organisational circumstances, a claim made recently by Bernard Bass (1997) for practices associated with transformational leadership. Evidence from many schools varying in size, location and level provides support for this claim in the context of educational organisations (Leithwood, Jantzi & Steinbach, 1999; Southworth, 1998). Such practices, however, ought to be considered a ‘necessary but not sufficient ’ part of an effective school leader’s repertoire. In addition, the practices of school leaders need to acknowledge important features of the context in which they find themselves. This paper explores the unique implications for school leaders (in this case, heads and deputy heads) of the accountability context in which most are now working. The framework used for identifying leadership implications is a four-fold classification of approaches to accountability developed as part of a recent study conducted in seven countries (Leithwood, Edge & Jantzi, 1999). Labelled market, decentralisation, professional and managerial approaches, each will be briefly described and implications for school leaders identified. The paper ends with several implications that arise from looking across, rather than just within, each of the four approaches