This chapter takes as its starting point the features identified as critical in understanding the process of educational reform, set out by McLaughlin and Ruby in their review of the case studies in Implementing Educational Reform: Cases and Challenges. These are: the historical and political context; models of implementation; timescale; internal and external actors; communication and discourse. It examines the relationship between structure and culture in promoting successful change in educational systems focusing particularly on the role of external actors in shaping the Scottish Government’s management of change and the tension between the broad curricular intentions and the narrow conception of assessment in upper secondary school. It also examines the extent to which governance reform is capable of enabling sustained cultural change; and the best means of encouraging teachers to develop a sense of agency, not simply the implementers of policy devised by external ‘experts’. It illustrates how educational reform in Scotland is complex, contested territory in which the policy intentions of government are interpreted and mediated through bureaucratic agencies, professional networks and an expanding field of interest and pressure groups.