Over recent years there has been an increasing amount of public and political discussion of educational directions and educational accountability in relation to Australian primary and secondary schools. The study reported in this monograph attempted to address these concerns through a four-stage process: a review of literature exploring community expectations of schooling; the development of a classification of educational issues; a survey of 400 primary and secondary government and nongovernment school principals to determine their priorities among the issues; and detailed studies of school practices that exemplified the priority issues in 27 of the survey schools. Some significant differences between the groups emerged in the data analysis: pastoral care and moral education were issues of particular importance to nongovernment school principals from both levels; cooperative learning was particularly important to primary government school principals; preparation for the world of work was much more important to secondary school principals than it was to primary school principals; and the issues of technology in education and special social competencies were of particular importance to secondary government school principals. From the study of selected schools a number of factors were identified in the areas of program, process, and personnel that were associated with successful practice. (Author/MJL)