This paper draws on policy text analysis and interviews with key actors in order to compare and contrast the extent to which and through which networks, training programmes and meetings European ideas of ‘best practice’ encounter and shape, or are shaped by, national assumptions about inspection practices in England and Scotland. We explore the interaction between England, Scotland and Europe, drawing on previous comparative work on Europeanisation in the two systems (Grek and Ozga 2010), to highlight issues about the extent to which and in what ways inspection is characterized, in each national system, as also international. We compare the ways in which the national role of inspection is understood in the two systems, and trace the flow of ideas within and across these systems that illuminate how the work of inspection developing in these different policy spaces. The key characteristics of the two national systems of Inspection are highlighted, along with the forms of knowledge that they prioritise, and their role as policy ‘teachers’.