State school inspection in Norway has undergone multiple reform initiatives from the state level, a system predominantly aimed at controlling legal compliance of school districts and individual schools. Rather than focusing on policy reform, this article draws attention to how enactment of state inspection policy has taken place through…

Evaluation systems of various types are an integral part of a country's education policy space, within which they are supposed to have the basic functions of enhancing accountability and supporting school development. Here we argue that in a crowded policy space evaluation systems may interfere with each other in a way that can have unintended…

This article focuses on the role of the state in the context of an increasing market orientation in Swedish education policy. It asks if and how a market orientation and privatisation can be reconciled with attempts to reestablish central output control. The controlling function of the state is emphasised in the form of efforts to inspect both…