This chapter conceptualises accreditation in university-based teacher education as a ritualised form of temporal governance. Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis, it examines how accreditation structures institutional time through repetitive cycles of evaluation, documentation, and anticipatory compliance. The chapter introduces the metaphor of a temporal scaffold to describe how teacher education programmes construct symbolic structures of legitimacy and sustainability through the ritualised compliance of accreditation cycles. However, while accreditation can support pedagogical development and accountability, it also risks privileging well-resourced institutions and diverting attention from substantive educational improvement. The findings highlight how bureaucratic timelines and standardised indicators reconfigure the rhythms of academic work, reinforcing procedural conformity. The chapter advocates for reimagining accreditation’s temporal logic to better align with pedagogical values, institutional diversity, and equity in teacher education.