Thousands of schools across the globe call themselves ‘British’, but there are only a limited number that are officially recognised by the Department for Education (DfE) in England under the British Schools Overseas (BSO) voluntary inspection scheme. Approved inspection providers accredit schools and publish a report on their findings making BSOs comparable to independent schools in England. Details of BSOs are publicly recorded in a database called ‘Get Information About Schools’ (GIAS) alongside all other DfE recognised schools. The BSO inspection scheme and the locations in which BSOs are found around the world provides the backdrop to a context where comparatively little is known about the principals of BSOs, about how they are evaluated and about their evaluation perceptions. This socially constructed phenomenological inquiry explores the evaluation experiences of a sample of BSO principals from six different countries. Themes and interpretations are drawn from data gathered in semi-structured interviews conducted directly with the principals. Survey responses, document analysis and extensive field notes as well as the views of a number of experts in the field are also used. The findings indicate that BSO principals are evaluated for a variety of reasons in a range of settings, where evaluation methods are influenced by how school ownership is structured, by competencies in evaluation ability and by how the results are handled. The findings also point out challenges to the overall BSO inspection scheme. The strength of this study is its exploratory nature which is significant for international school leadership, for principal evaluation and for those who have a wider academic interest in international education. This report on the evaluation perceptions of BSO principals contributes to a previously limited corpus of knowledge on the subject.