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This article analyses the effects of the devolution of the French education system on the Education General Inspectorates. Based on a “public policy sociology” perspective, it uses data from three previous studies to question, through various historical sequences, the scope and modalities of the institutional change of these inspections and beyond them, the current transformations of the central regulation of the French education system. It shows that these bodies did not have to reposition themselves radically. They rather change gradually according to the policy configurations.