The accounting education of people in managerial roles or performing managerial work is relatively neglected in the literature compared with educating accountants. Moreover, judged from most textbooks purporting to serve their study programmes, the education they receive very often seems like a potted version of that served out to accountant students. In this paper, models of managerial work and abilities, prior research into learning-centred accountant education and management study programmes, and the authors’ participant-observation of educating these people are synthesised in order to propose a curriculum better attuned to their roles and work.