This article reviews the changing relationships between education policies and their links to social disadvantage and conceptions of school leadership. The argument is that definitions of leadership evolve as the assumptions underpinning the relationships between society, the economy and education institutions change. The article draws on the case of English education policy developments over the last 60 years, and places debates about school leadership against a set of changing relationships between the state and the institutions of the market. Defining a good school leader very much depends on ideas about the core school functions as well as dominant ideas about how these functions relate the institution of the school to major social and economic structures.