The three German speaking countries have different ways of distributing power: In Switzerland, the local community has a strong influence on what happens in schools, whereas the confederate level has no or little say. In Germany, the legislative power is divided between the federation and the state level, but the responsibility for educational matters lies primarily with the states. In Austria, responsibilities for legislation and implementation in school education are divided between the Federation and the Provinces. Reform steps have been discussed leading from a governance system which is highly bureaucratic, strongly regulated in details, hierarchically organized, little output-oriented towards one which builds on school autonomy and systemic control of outcome. And similarly from a system which has too many actors, too many parallel structures and too little congruence in task-orientation and responsibility towards one which minimizes administrative structures. Presently, schools in German speaking countries experience changes from an administrative towards an evidence-driven governance, which has led not only to a re-definition of the tasks demanded of school heads and an increased power of control (Schratz ), but also transformed the function of the inspectorate, because non-government institutions or agencies have been created to take over responsibility for quality control. Although decision-making structures concerning the development of schools and teaching have been shifted to the schools themselves, schools heads have not gained more power in their sphere of action. They either pass on the (new) pressure on success or failure to their teachers or hold a sandwich position to prevent teacher to be strained by the reform discourse.

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