ABSTRACT
Studying school inspection makes diverse forms of 'text and talk' visible: policy documents, organisational statements, inspection reports, media accounts and interview materials from the inspectors and inspected. This chapter concentrates on how inspection is publicly represented, centred on how inspectorates account for themselves. Inspectorates' extensive public communication helps to build an impression of legitimate and productive state agencies. In Sweden for example, the General Director Ann-Marie Begler, has been named the most powerful person in the field of education ahead of the highly influential Minister of Education Jan Bjorklund who was third on the list. The Swedish Schools Inspectorate more explicitly focuses on the students' academic development. Overall, the inspectorate's discourse marks continuity with an old Swedish heritage and with ideas emanating from progressive school reforms on equality already introduced in the 1940s. One such idea is that the education system has a compensatory mission to lift young people out of their under-privileged social contexts and make social mobility possible.
