Ad-hoc numbers forming provision and policy: round and round of universal access in an Australian preschool

Abstract

ABSTRACTAustralian early childhood education still labours with the achievement of universal access and the production of comprehensive and consistent data to underpin a national evidence base. In this article, we attend to the processes led by numbers whereby new practices of quantification, rationalization and reporting are introduced and mastered in a New South Wales preschool to reach universal access and effective data reporting following state initiatives. Provisional numbers, set by the state government, are instrumental in configuring and solidifying these processes through which preschools engage in creative strategizing, modelling and calculations to enact, inform and form policies. With the help of a preschool director’s biographical notes, we explore the complex entanglements of these new processes and the resulting ambivalent positions professionals find themselves in, the ethical dilemmas that emerge and the practical and material consequences and political possibilities that formalizing processes of universal access and data production bring forward.