New governing modes enforce individualized and outcome-oriented policy across Europe. Inspired by Luhmann’s (2000) distinction between conditional and aim-oriented programs, the paper examines implications of national evaluation and school inspection for comprehensive schooling in Norway. The first part of the paper describes parallel reform movements toward accountability and individualisation in the education and health system where risk management directs expectations to imaginary futures of observable outcomes (Gottweis 2005). The second part of the paper is based on a comparative analysis (Ragin and Amoroso 2011) of reform documents and school principals’ responses to a questionnaire about the application of legal standards and the organisation of teaching in three regions in Norway during the 2000s. In the final part of the paper we discuss the incongruent relationship between risk management and comprehensive schooling referring to Klafki’s (2001) distinction between internal and external differentiation. Aim-oriented programs make schools accountable for learning attainment and do not allow for internal differentiation to the same degree as conditional programs do. Thus, the paper explores how intensified expectations towards learning performance, associated with new governing modes, increase the risks of excluding groups of pupils from normal teaching, adjusting core principles of comprehensive schooling.