Abstract School inspection is used by most European education systems as a major
instrument for controlling and promoting the quality of schools. Surprisingly, there is
little research knowledge about how school inspections drive the improvement of
schools and which types of approaches are most effective and cause the least
unintended consequences. The study presented in this paper uses interviews with
inspection officials and a document analysis to reconstruct the “program theories”
(i.e. the assumptions on causal mechanisms, linking school inspections to their
intended outcomes of improved teaching and learning) of Inspectorates of Education
in six European countries. The results section of the paper starts with a summary ofthe commonalities and differences of these six national inspection models withrespect to standards and thresholds used, to types of feedback and reporting, and tothe sanctions, rewards and interventions applied to motivate schools to improve.Next, the intermediate processes through which these inspection models are expectedto promote good education (e.g. through actions of stakeholders) are explained. In theconcluding section, these assumptions are critically discussed in the light of research
knowledge.