The inspectorate’s judgements about a school’s educational quality in the Netherlands are to a large extent based on sophisticated desk research, risk analyses and analyses of the school’s self-evaluation reports. This relatively distant mode of inspecting schools relies on rational ideas about organizational management and control while aspects that might hinder boards from effective steering and influencing processes in schools are almost neglected. By comparing two schools that have boards that are considered to be in control and two schools that have boards that are not in control, we examine whether and how an inspectorate’s judgement of being in control fits the behaviour of teachers, team leaders and middle managers. This study among teachers, team leaders, middle managers and quality assurance managers shows that the extent of board control only partly fits the behaviour of teachers, team leaders and middle managers.