Recent education policy analysis has revealed the standardisation of education systems and an intensified focus on learners and learning to meet the requirements of the global economy and neo-liberalism. In this paper we analyse the way that early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand has become increasingly entangled with school sector priorities and international discourses of lifelong learning as it has encountered these requirements. We trace the shift from an explict rejecting and countering of school sector pedagogy to the promoting of increasing continuity with school sector priorities. We draw attention to dynamic, contrasting and competing interests and entities that have shaped the construction of learning and learners and curriculum and assessment priorities. We argue the need to attend to the complex mix of constitutive forces at work in the formulation and enactment of early childhood sector priorities, in particular to these crucial entanglements with school sector priorities, international discourses of lifelong learning and neo-liberal economic rationalities.