The Danish free school tradition has entailed a large degree of associational freedom for non-governmental schools, religious as well as non-religious. Until the late 1990s, the non-governmental schools were under no strict ideological or pedagogical limitations; they could recruit teachers and students according to their own value base, and were given a large state subsidy. From the late 1990s, a number of legislative changes were introduced demanding that non-governmental schools provide civic education and document the academic value of their teaching programmes. The rules concerning the monitoring of schools were also changed. This article analyses the political justification for these changes and asks to what extent the changes have altered the Danish free school tradition.