State school inspection creates expectations within the interface between transnational and national policy contexts and the stakeholders' perceptions and preferences of responsibilities and roles. The paper investigates how school inspectors perceive their regulatory role within national governing, contributing to the accountability of expectations towards themselves and those inspected. In a qualitative study, over 30 key actors on county and municipal levels in three Norwegian counties were interviewed. This case-comparative study is based on interviews with three county educational directors and six school inspectors, all either trained lawyers or pedagogues. Theoretically, the study draws on neo-institutional theory, interpreted within the overall discussion of europeanisation (Meyer & Rowan, 1983; Eisenberg et al., 2010; Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011; Scott, 2014) Expected findings suggest that the role of school inspectors in Norway is evolving, possibly transforming, from a predominantly control-based, compliancy focus to a greater emphasis on quality assessment, potentially intervening into schools and classrooms. Subsequently, the Norway system may be currently developing more in the direction of other European inspectoral models (Grek et al., 2013).