This article draws on Foucault's work on subjectivity (Foucault, 2000), which has been furthered by Keddie and Niesche's (2017) interpretation of Foucault's work on ethics to explore English leaders' work in two government high schools in Victoria, Australia. A review of the educational literature shows that Foucauldian research in the UK (Gillies, 2008, 2013) and in Australia (Heffernan, 2018; Niesche, 2013) focuses on principals as school leaders. Middle level leadership, which is the leadership space occupied by most English leaders, is yet to be fully explored using a Foucauldian paradigm. Similar to global (Holloway & Brass, 2017) and national trends (Gannon, 2012), English leaders in Victoria work in a performative context (Doecke, 2007; Manuel, Carter, & Dutton, 2018). However, this study shows that despite the performative context, two middle level leaders employ leadership practices that are based on an ethical framework (Foucault, 2002, 2003) revealing different views and practices of leadership, data and performance standards from what is intended by the performativity culture in high schools in Victoria.