Within a period of less than ten years, a majority of Swiss cantons have – independently from each other – changed their systems of inspection. Both speed of transformation and parallelism across cantons are surprising if one thinks of inspection as part of a social institution focused on the control, regulation and legitimation of public education, i.e. an integrated set of structures and procedures, values and norms, and routinized practice – as well as their cognitive representation in the actors’ ‘models’ (Meyer & Scott 1992). Drawing on documents published between 1995 and 2005 for a sample of cantons, the paper first gives an account of the change occurring within the decade (Kussau & Rosenmund 2005). The resulting picture will reveal some convergences not only across Swiss cantons but also in regard of transformations occurring in other countries. In a second section this shift will be set against the background of the larger historical context, i.e the development of modern (sub-)national education systems after 1830/1840 and the transformations of the nation-state (De Vincenti et al. 2011: Heinzer 2012; Rothen 2013). In the final section we discuss a set of variables, which might help explain the phenomenon of rapid institutional change.