ABSTRACT
This chapter adds an observations about the effects of NAPLAN by taking a material-semiotic approach and drawing upon the resources of the sociology of numbers and quantification. The data sources for this study are primarily speeches made by former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Julia Gillard and media releases from her office. Other data sources include policy documents, including the main agenda-setting document for the introduction of NAPLAN and MySchool, Quality Education: The Case for an Education Revolution and the extensive reports on NAPLAN and MySchool in the press. The conducting of NAPLAN and the updating of MySchool has become an annual and routine element of schooling in Australia. These interested observations of NAPLAN and MySchool are not merely providing useful, detailed accounts of Australian schooling; rather, they are actually changing the very nature of Australian schooling, so that it is beginning to more closely resemble the abstract version presented on the MySchool website.
