The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss how principals perceive and handle inspections of schools. In a case study, principals in one municipality were asked about their opinions. The picture of the ideal school, as it is described in official documents, seems to be different from what teachers face in their every-day-work. By comparing the ideal image of how school functions with how this is described in reports from the Schools Inspectorate it becomes possible to get a better understanding of what opportunities and constraints principals have to handle the discovered divergences.
Proceedings of the 20th Annual Meeting of the European Network for Improving Research and Development in Education Leadership and Management, ENIRDELM, September 22-24 2011.Reykjavik: University of Iceland, School of Education.