Abstract

Numbers have long been associated with statecraft. In bureaucratic processes of accounting, regulation was effected by forming centres of calculation. This paper suggests that contemporary post-bureaucratic regimes are evolving new forms of accounting, in which the centre inserts itself into individual sites to exercise authority. This ‘intimate accounting’ involves technologies of transparency through which individual sites such as schools are required to declare intimate information publicly. In turn, the public, armed with information, is exhorted to become informed and to exercise influence on institutions to excel and to hold them to account. Using the case of Australia’s ‘Education Revolution’, this paper describes the processes of intimate accounting. It then explores the efforts to resist, subvert and undo such calculations. Finally, it speculates on why these calculations have continued to appear robust in the face of opposition and what would need to be done to escape or resist such calculations. 
 Keywords: Sociology of Numbers; Education Policy and Numbers; Accountability

Highlights

  • While quantification and measurement have long been features of social policy and governance, there has been a steep rise both in the generation of numeric data and in the significance accorded to numbers in recent years (Miller, 2005; Rose, 1991)

  • The Prime Minister Tony Blair summed up this new form of governance in his manifesto with stark clarity: New Labour is a party of ideas and ideals but not of outdated ideology

  • As with Asdal’s (2011) case, the insertion of authority into each school via the numbers of the Education Revolution saw a replication of the ‘office’ at each site, as National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and My School became more and more firmly entrenched, and began to affect schooling practices more and more

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Summary

Introduction

While quantification and measurement have long been features of social policy and governance, there has been a steep rise both in the generation of numeric data and in the significance accorded to numbers in recent years (Miller, 2005; Rose, 1991). Did the new calculations – NAPLAN assessments, the ICSEA index, the like-school comparisons, the other numbers from the My School website – help the government and the parents to know each school more intimately?

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