The focus in this article is on Brazilian education policy, specifically quality assurance and evaluation. The starting point is that quality, measured by means of large-scale assessments, is one of the key discursive justifications for educational change. The article addresses the questions of how quality evaluation became a significant feature of Brazilian education, and how international organisations are related to this. The notion of measurement emerged at the beginning of the 20th century among an active educational community, strongly inspired by US educational thinking and supported by instrumental educational cooperation with US agencies and universities. Large-scale assessment became more and more popular in the 1960s-1980s, mainly within this setting. Educational indicators have been under development since the 1990s, alongside the education-related programmes of international organisations. Drawing on earlier research and documents, the article analyses historical and political influences from both international and national actors on the emergence of quality assessment in Brazilian basic education. The authors also point out the need for further research from a more complex perspective on the interplay between the various actors responsible for policies focusing on educational quality.