The New Zealand Treasury set up the following key principles for public management in all state agencies, clarity of objectives, freedom to manage, accountability, effective assessment of performance, and adequate information flows (New Zealand Treasury, 1987, Cook, 2004). For the education sector this means that different education agencies need to co-ordinate their strategic direction so as to ensure that monitoring of education quality is related to high level goals of system performance. The Management for Outcomes framework provides a common model of a quality management cycle for all state departments.