This paper presents an account of the doing and undoing of numbers in contemporary education policy in Australia, and the efforts at play to bring clarity and to ‘shine a light’ on what goes on in Australian schools. The ‘Education Revolution,’ introduced in 2008, ushered in a range of measures to increase transparency and accountability in Australian education policy and practice. The idea was to measure the value added by individual schools through comparisons of ‘like schools’ – i.e., schools with similar populations. Such calculations were to enable clear comparisons, clear identification of problems and clear suggestions for remedies. These numbers have now insinuated themselves into practices in a number of ways. However, challenges continue to be faced in the effort to gain clarity and to ‘know’ with certainty. This ANT-inspired analysis follows Callon’s insights about ‘acting in an uncertain world’ to trace contemporary struggles to bring order and clarity to complex and uncertain spaces. This story of the tug of war between clarity and complexity, and the struggle to order disorderly phenomena, has relevance beyond Australia and would resonate with many other national systems, particularly among OECD nations.