The Federal Republic of Germany is comprised of 16 states, each having its own school system framed by individual jurisdictional and administrative laws, encompassing its own educational-policy goals, school structures, school types, curricula, etc. The governing of each ‘state’ is organized according to a rather traditional bureaucratic governing model over three to four levels: state, district, local (for certain school types), school unit/organisation. On federal level the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs is coordinating national cross-state education reforms. The traditional assessment system of school quality in Germany consists of school supervisory authorities. As many other western countries, there has been a trend towards decentralization in the German education system. The shift has given schools increased responsibilities in matters of curriculum and instruction, human resources, finances, organization, and (self-)evaluation. It is a mixture of “top-down” stipulations to prescribe, evaluate and control quality-standards, and “bottom up” school development processes based on a greater number of competencies ascribed to schools. Since PISA 2000, new regulations regarding means of quality and accountability control have been added (such as education standards, large scale assessments, school inspections and education reports which form a broad monitoring system). Therefore, the states must identify and separate the oversight responsibilities of the inspectorate and the school supervisory authority. Overlapping tasks of their work are the consulting and support services for inspected schools. Hence, they have to transform into authorities of school support or school improvement. However, the school supervisory authorities have not been able to transform easily according to new roles. There need to be extensive professional development programmes for agents on all governance levels in the school system. In this paper, the organization of educational state agencies and their role and function as to quality management is analysed and critically discussed.

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