This paper draws on research on inspection regimes in Scotland, England and Sweden (Ozga 2013) to argue for a focus on changing practices of accountability in education and their relationship to changes in the governing of education (and by extension, other public policy areas) within and across shifting policy spaces in Europe. The paper compares inspection's relationship with competitive measurement of performance in the three national systems, and considers their impact on more complex forms of accounting for national/school and individual performance, looking in particular at the generation of relations of (dis)trust between education professionals and governments in the context of a resurgence of neo-liberal 'modernisations' (Peck 2010). It argues that (democratic) political accountability is increasingly displaced by increasing political pressure on inspectorates, and examines key points of difference in the alignment of inspection with governing regimes in Scotland and England, considering how they address and/or contribute to growing problems of diminished trust across and within education systems. References - Ozga, J. (2013) ‘Accountability as a Policy Technology: accounting for education performance in Europe’ International Review of Administrative Science 79 (2) 292–309 - Peck, Jamie. 2010. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.