Accountability, as we use the term, refers to when an actor in virtue of contractual obligations has the right to hold another actor to a set of standards, to judge whether the standards have been met, and to impose sanctions if the standards are deemed unfulfilled. In this article we compare how (and if) these rights have been distributed and enacted in educational administration in Norway and Sweden. By specifying contractual obligations we wish to separate accountability from other kinds of asymmetric power relations, such as those between parent and child, and focus on acts of delegation.