School inspections have become an important instrument of quality assurance and quality development in many European countries. So far, the focus of empirical research on school inspections has been on the acceptance of the procedure among the school-internal actors, its influence for internal quality development and its effects on student performance. On the contrary, this paper focuses on a different aspect: the evaluation work of school inspectors. It addresses the question of how the inspectors reach their assessments within a team. To answer this question, the article describes the official procedures of the evaluation work of inspectors in Germany (Lower Saxony), England and Sweden, systematically regarding the evaluation framework (1), the inspection teams (2), the approach during the evaluative work (3), and the feedback of the results (4). In addition, current research results on evaluation work of inspectors in these three state inspection systems are presented. A recent study of the authors is reported in more detail. The data stems from qualitative interviews with 28 school inspectors from Lower Saxony. They show that inspectors try to reach a unanimous assessment within their teams. In this process, three methods of reaching a "consensus" can be identified: the evaluative-positioning, the evaluative-thought-experimental and the descriptive-evaluative method. The article ends by presenting a new approach to school inspection which might serve as an opportunity to reflect about whether the aspiration to arrive at a consensus within inspection teams is still desirable.