The article examines the role of society’s demands on the outcomes of schools’ efforts to manage education quality. New results in education become achievable if schools receive signals about the existence of society’s demand for these results. For the school, significant signals are criterions by which its activities are evaluated, and steps taken to encourage the activity of teachers. The current signals orient schools rather towards the preservation of the existing goals than towards their change. Unless in the near future schools receive convincing evidence of society’s interest in the change of the quality of education, the outcomes of school education in 2020 will differ little from today’s.