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Adele Horin argues that while the teachers’ unions opposed seeting up the MySchool web site, it was the MySchool data that was needed to support campaigns to redistribute educational funding:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/society-the-loser-in-education-gap-20111111-1nb66.html
Horin is late to the party. Some of us, in comments on this site, were saying it well before her.
On that topic, November 15 is a national day of action for public schools.
Hi Helen, castironbalcony opens with a rather intimidating ‘attack site warning’ page, has done for ages. What’s happening?
Of course Adele is absolutely correct. Private schools in this day and age are an anachronism, and should not only lose taxpayer funding, but should be gradually phased out. Sure, allow current private high school private students to complete their schooling where they’ve started but prevent new enrollees from now on.
The USA had a good affirmative action programme many years ago called “bussing” whereby children from affluent and white areas were bussed into poor and/or black areas for school. We should introduce this idea here. Wealthy parents must realise that their bright children are a public resource and should be placed where they can be used to upgrade the education outcomes of children from disadvantaged areas.
The notion that we should allow parents with above-average financial resources to artificially enhance their own children’s educational outcomes is one that works towards increasing the already appalling level of inequality in our society. It is surely extreme selfishness.
@1 Horin mischaracterises the teachers’ unions position.
The teachers’ unions were not “bitterly opposed” (the hyperbole should give you a clue that Horin is bloviating) to the notion of making data available publicly to inform parents and school administrators of where funds were most needed. In fact, that is precisely what a range of unionists recommended, and what has come to pass. Used properly, the data has and had the potential to enable better resourcing decisions, as predicted, and as is now being attempted in a number of funding review process at state and federal levels.
Before any smartarse out there wants to try a cherry-picked “gotcha” quote from a union member that ‘proves’ teachers unions opposed MySchool, I would invite you read NSWTF and AEU media releases from the start of 2010 when MySchool was launched, and you will see their concerns and caveats spelled out in a measured and nuanced fashion. The concern has always been, not the release of the data, but the potential for its misuse, misapplication and misunderstanding.
The use of the data for the purpose of educational funding redistribution has received express support from teachers unions, consistently, over the whole of the MySchool “era”.
What the teacher unions opposed was the chimerical, simplistic, bombastic and self-important myth promulgated by Fairfax and News Lt papers (and opinion writers like Adele Horin) that publishing league tables based on MySchool data was some sort of “historic breakthrough in transparency” for families trying to work out what school to send their child to. Go and read the SMH’s self-congratulatory and self-pleasuring editorials and columns on the day it first published its league tables. Legends in their own minds, the papers were single-handedly (sic) saving parents from the horror of ‘not knowing’ whether their child attended a ‘good’ school…
It was explained at length by teacher unions, and many others, that the MySchool website could only be as good as the data going into it, and that the problem was that the re-presentation of data, and failure to compare like schools with like, would lead to invidious comparisons and false impressions of the true quality of schools (to say nothing of the fact that MySchool grossly simplifies the holistic nature of a school environment).
The above, by the way, is also the view of the NSW Education Minister, National Party member Adrian Piccoli, who has warned newspapers that he will pursue through the courts any newspapers that break laws against the publication of “league tables” in NSW.
The self-important myth of the public-interest value of a site like MySchool is further deflated by the fact that, year-on-year, traffic to the site has fallen off a cliff, and is below half the volume in the first year. This reflects the fact that the real value and interest in the data lies not with hoards of a prurient public and media trying to do some cock-measuring — but rather with the people who are responsible for designing and administering educational policy. It’s wonks’ territory.
It doesn’t surprise me that an opinion writer whose newspaper promoted the shallow, self-serving and simplistic view of the real value and purpose of MySchool data, is repeating the same shallow, self-serving and simpistic view.
It also doesn’t surprise me that some people continue to swallow the myth.
….further to the “wonks’ territory” remark — the Gonski funding review, informed by MySchool data, did not need the website or the publicity to do the job. It is a wonks review, prepared outside the media circus. It would have arrived at the same conclusion whether the data was made available to the public via a front-end web application, or simply analysed in the back-rooms, as technocratic public policy has always typically been formulated.
Putting the data online is immaterial to the way the Gonski review carried out its work.
Horin conflates the two, when they have nothing to do with each other. That is what makes Horin’s opening premise…
…so extraordinarily dishonest.
Gold Coast wins Commonwealth Games 2018.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-12/gold-coast-to-host-2018-comm-games/3662402
Prediction: Scantily clad meter maids, large surf boards and people in high rise apartment block suits lead the opening ceremony parade.
Reading one of the dumbest pieces of commentary ever:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/opinion/to-save-our-economy-ditch-taiwan.htm?_r=1
and a nice take-down here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/should-we-sell-taiwan-2011-11
that says some useful things about the economic relationship between the US and China.
Mercurous, it is the existence of MySchool that has forced the private schools to hand over their financial data. It is this data in combination with the test scores, that is the factual foundation for Gonski’s recommendations. And making it all public and transparent is what is giving Gonski legitimacy. For decades, private schools have hidden behind a cloud of no data and obscurantism. Now that their value for money (or lack thereof) has become obvious to all, not just public education advocates, and the data is being used in a smart policy process that will inevitably lead to an undeniable conclusion that they have been rorting the system, they are squealing like stuck pigs.
None of this would have been possible, in practice, without MySchool. Fuck me, this should be obvious to anyone with an IQ with three digits.
Mark Latham went to the 2004 Federal election campaign with a plan to de-fund the private shcools, and take on the God botherers once and for all. Julia Gillard was sufficiently close to the Werriwa Warrior’s campaign that year to make it unlikely that this would be the direction that Labor will go in the next Federal election. The Greens might go down that path, but at the ned of the day, they need Labor in government in order to have any influence over anything, as can be seen in the states of NSW and Victoria.
On MySchool… back in 2008 I saw an excellent presentation by an education research unit in Britain on the use of school statistics in the assessment of schools there. They pointed out two significant problems:
1. you want to use stats about, say, 4 year overall performance to choose the best school to send your year 8 to, so the ratings on any one school’s performance in any one year are irrelevant to judging what school is best – you need to adjust for family and pupil-level factors that interact with the school’s particular properties to enable the school to help your child achieve over four years. This can’t be done with simplistic league tables. But…
2. if you try to use available school data to model achievement over four years, and take into account pupil-specific factors (their economic circumstances, their past school achievement, family size, etc.) then you end up with a model that cannot distinguish, statistically, between any two schools on four year performance. As I recall from the speech, the best available models with the best available stats could only distinguish between the top 4 or 5 schools and the bottom 4 or 5 schools on four-year achievement.
The reason for this is that when you model these things properly, after you take out the effect of family circumstances, schools don’t make such a big difference to individual performance – chances are that the kids who do well in the “best” schools would probably have done well in much worse schools as well.
So given this, things like MySchool will remain pointless as a means of choosing what school to send your children to unless a) you can develop a better mixed effects model than the best minds in Britain, or b) they significantly improve the type of data they collect (bearing in mind that no one can work out what data is better to collect).
Also, try to imagine a journalist, who is going to be thicker than your average year 8 student, trying to understand this for an article on school performance.
This means that league tables just end up being a way of ranking schools, enabling the top schools to continue to maintain a reputation they won through either self-selection or luck.
sg @ 12 – doesn’t that kind of imply that calls for public schools to have higher funding arent worth addressing? More money won’t lead to better educational outcomes. It’s probably better to spend the money directly on families in need instead.
I can’t believe this.
Just setting up the drum kit for a little practice and I hear noises from next door indicating they’ve bought a kit.
Maybe we should pool resources for a studio.
Revenge, maybe?!
chris, at a small area level in the UK, rates of unauthorized school absence decline linearly with wealth – the kids in the poorest areas are distinctly more likely to skip school than the kids in the wealthiest areas. So yes, I think the findings of that presentation were that a) we need better models and b) family and community influences on school achievement are huge, and swamp the ability to compare the schools’ specific effects on their children. So if you want to improve educational outcomes for individuals, you need to reduce inequality and improve the wealth of the poorest.
Of course, you still need to spend money on schools and I guess that more funding improves educational outcomes for everyone (though with diminishing returns).
http://news.antiwar.com/2011/11/10/us-to-announce-permanent-military-presence-in-australia/
Wondering what people think abou this?
One point, Debbieanne: it’s yet another example of the view that the broader Australian public can’t be trusted to have a rational debate about its own security interests.
No advance debate or even an explanation of the rationale – we just get lumped with this as a fait accompli.
@16. It’s China getting what it asked for.
I like contrast and perspective, so I took a trip down LP memory lane.
Here’s a Saturday Salon from May 21 2005,
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2005/05/21/saturday-salon-6/
And last week,
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2011/11/05/saturday-salon-103/
Anyone care to expand on the changes or reasons for them?
I mean, Howard was PM, workchoices in place(?), wages lower, Murdoch rampant, Bush US President , Iraq war on, plus………?
Mark, I would be particularly interested in your perspective as LP is your baby. Are we ( Australians ) more ** [insert word]** or less?
Or has LP attracted a different kind of commentor over the years?
Have the rules changed?
Its a fascinating thing social (blog) group evolution.
Marines? Darwin? Nothing more than a symbolic tripwire.
Of course, this may not go down well in GOP circles unless they change the name of Darwin to Creation Science.
The idea of having a US base in Darwin does not show a lot of intelligent design.
If I were the Opposition at the next Question Time I’d be asking Peter Garrett whether he supports this, and humming “US forces” as he rises to answer.
Helen – SNAP!!!
Recently moved-in student neighbours turn out to have a band, playing dirgey synth-rock with live drums. Regular rehearsals too – they must be serious.
I gave one of their old keyboards (older than me, almost twice as old as them) a going over and got it back to full spec, and fixed one of their amps, and now I’m like some kind of guru apparently. Now they mow my lawn for nix.
FDB
Your better halve is named “nix”
Oops, add “?” to above.
As a Victorian, I know I can’t forget the wonderful memories from the $700 million we spent on the 2006 games.
There was…um…that race…um…and that event…and…yeah…and that thing from the opening ceremony…and…glorious victories by Australia over the Cook Islands and the Falklands. Can’t remember in what, but I think there were a lot of them.
Oh, and most of Royal Park was closed off for security purposes. I remember that.
I hope, in the interests of setting a good environmental example, they recycle Matilda for the opening ceremony. I believe she’s still at one of the theme parks, isn’t she?
$700 million? Approximately twice the amount the current government intends to cut from the public system in the next couple of years. (Day of action for public education = 15 November.)
FDB, it’s obviously a kind of disease, which is contagious.
Private schools vs public schools. You know in a lot of countries there are two ways to get a really good job– (1) you have to be really, really smart (and I mean, not just get a good mark in the HSC like some show poodle) and get into the public university system and then you need to work your butt off to graduate. Or (2) you have to be really, really rich and breeze through the whole thing and graduate– in which case it’s very much a case of not what you know, but who you know. It’s kind of a social networking thing as you then have to use your influence to get the job done.
That’s the basis for the private school system in Australia, a kind of new-age version of the British Public School system. Private schools in Australia are selling dreams, folks. And Australians love that sh!t. It’s like stock market investment. And in general, it keeps people stupid.
Here’s where I got the $700 million figure from, Helen.
Note that that includes expenditure on some permanent sporting facilities (MCG renovations, Darebin Indoor Sports Centre, and so on). But $200 million was spent on games security!
It boggles the mind what colossal wastes of money one-off major sporting events are.
I don’t really worry about the permanent US military presence (but no bases!) in Darwin. What are they going to do there? It’s a little too far from Canberra for a government overthrow (whether directly, or indirectly by would-be Suhartos or Pinochets down under). It’s not like the USSR stationing troops in East Berlin.
What worries me are secret “copyright” agreements that neuter our PBS. Those are real threats to our laws and our sovereignty.
Most every female under 35, no make that 45, in Darwin would be not exactly displeased at the prospect of a couple of battalions of US Marines being stationed there.
What gripe can anybody else possibly have?
i got a better idea for those US forces heading to darwin. how about diverting them over to afghanistan to replace our troops there, and bring ours back to ‘protect’ darwin, not that it needs it.
oh and yeah, china is winning capitalism.
the US wants china to do something or other, which china is under no obligation to do. evidenced by the fact that there’s no internation trade dispute in a court or anything.
so plan B is for the US to flex it’s military muscle. and more than just drag us along this time, actually that’s unfair. our ‘leaders’ volunteer us for everything b4 it’s asked.
either way, this time, WE stand to be afghanistan.
although i don’t think china is stupid. it can just watch and laugh. because china hasn’t threatened anyone except it’s own people. and since the world isn’t demanding their products anymore (cos everyone’s broke), they’ll stop buying raw materials 1st from… us, probably.
the coalition was quick to say yes to this one. you know it’s a bad thing when labor and the coalition agree.
These under 45 yo Korean women have a different opinion about the presence of US troops in their towns:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/10/us-military-south-korea-status-of-forces-agreement-sofa-rapes-intenational-diplomacy.html
John Howard as President of the International Democratic Union (IDU), a conservative think tank, was in London to chair a meeting.Tony Abbott was also attending and Howard was then to address the Oxford Union but he pulled out of the latter at the last moment; anybody have any insights ?
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/john-howard-cancels-oxford-union-speech/story-e6frfku0-1226193120813
@35
jusme,
Through this year, officials and military leaders in China have been claiming that the entire South China Sea, all the way down to Indonesia and Malaysia, is China’s maritime territory. There have been hostile encounters between Chinese fishing and naval vessels with national navies in the area, for example, Vietnam’s (and Japan’s and South Korea’s in the north). So there is a great deal of anxiety among south east Asian nations about China’s intentions, and the US is playing regional politics and stepping in.
@Katz, I was also wondering just how many females from classes such as Insecta, Reptilia, Aves and even most of the members of Mammalia in Darwin would even be aware of what a US Marine was.
Which raises the question, what precisely is the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) governing US military personnel in Australia?
I presume even Australian lickspittles might object to high levels of legal immunity for US malefactors.
Cast Iron Balcony is about to go live in its very own domain. Should be posting the new link very soon.
Internet answers:
Just in case any LPers are in Melbourne, bored and in need of some great music, solid harmonies and a good feed:
Tess McKenna and the Shapiros
Sunday 13 November
Union Hotel
Union st., Brunswick
5-7 pm
Vale Peter Roebuck .. I just heard.
A chap with a charming, if somewhat florid and eccentric style of commentary for those of us with a fascination for cricket. I don’t know how he came to die so suddenly — he seemed to be quite himself the other day commenting on the cricket at Capetown.
I do feel a serious sense of loss, and hope that all of his close friends and family understand how much he was valued within the cricket community.
Still drawing dogs; someone asked to see one a while back. Link: – http://scatfragments.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/roy/
That’s a beautiful drawing Adrien. Do you have any more?
Of course Adele is absolutely correct. Private schools in this day and age are an anachronism, and should not only lose taxpayer funding, but should be gradually phased out.
Hah!
Apart from the arguments against an entirely government controlled education system there’s still the big fat elephant; you don;t have the
power to phase out private schools. Two powerful interests stand in your way.
How do you get rid of an institution like Geelong Grammar? The alumnus of this school are among those who rule the world. And then there’s the fact, generally left undiscussed in left wing circles, that working class education of a better quality than the state system is often supplied by the Holy Micks.
Together these interests have their hooks in the two choices we have for government. Phase it out? Fegedaboudit!
And what gives you the right to make that level of decision about the education of a child? Doubtless all children are entitled to education regardless of socio-economic disposition. Doubtless too parents can fail their children or more often simply not have the time or the capacity. But some parents may have better ideas than the Department offers.
It might be better if the state system worked better. It might be better if it was just all, um, better. Generally it’s slipping all the kids agree. If you’re Asian and you moved here one of your main memes is how much easier school is in Australia. They thought it’d be superior, they said. Western country and all. But noooo.
Fine – Thanks.
I do but not online. For sale soon $3…
Katz @ 20.
LOL.
This ignores the completely accidental role of the wealth of the family the child was born into. It’s pointless what the parents may think about which school their kid goes to if they can’t afford it.
The last sentence should read “some parents may have more money than the Department offers”. That’s the bit that’s ignored in the ideology of “choice”.
http://www.forourfuture.org.au/
Robert @ 17 – I don’t think the Australian public could have a calm rational debate about it. Before very long it’d essentially be “USA is evil” vs “USA is good”….
sg @ 15 said
And what’s missing is exactly where on that curve we are.
And given that it seems that there currently seems to difficulty measuring educational outcome differences with the current amount of public school funding it makes me wonder just how much you could pull out of the public system and still not see a measurable difference. Perhaps the victorian government is trying to find out!
Helen, I’m not not ignoring it, I’m acknowledging it. What you ignore is a. There’s quite a few genuine working class Australians who’ll tell you that they would be on the dole now if they didn’t have the choice of St Joseph’s of the Casual Tie, and b. Those who would ‘phase out’ private schooling don’t have the power.
And as an antidote to the unfairness of privilege it’s [redacted]. Truth is this antidote has not yet been discovered. You don’t eliminate privilege by transferring education entirely to the State.
Correction, my children are a public nothing and nobody is getting their social engineering clutches on them. This will be enforced by any means necessary.
.. Both of these statements made without providing an alternative. The state education system provides an education only for those who are priveliged enough to live near a state high school.
Impact of the CO2 price “little more than the inflation jump from high banana prices”
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/energy-smart/at-9-a-family-its-not-all-doom-and-gloom-20111112-1nd3v.html
I think the argument over US bases comes down to whether you’re happy for Australia to be a vassal state. Personally if we’re to be subordinate to an external government I’d like voting rights, anything else is sham democracy.
Adrien’s comment about the elimination of private schooling not stopping privilege elides the point. ‘Greater’ Private schools largely exist to perpetuate privilege through the old school tie networks. I take it you’ve never experienced the shock of friends and colleagues to discover you attended a *public* school and still seem an ok person. Then you have fringe religious schools which aim to quarantine kids from those with different religious beliefs. Whether it’s people from different social or religious groups private schools are about isolating one’s children from ‘teh other’ disruptive influences. There’s a lot to be said for comprehensive schooling to prepare students for a diverse society.
And also vale Peter Roebuck, I’m not a cricket tragic but he was still an entertaining occasional read.
Adrien, not funding private businesses from the public purse is not the same thing as “transferring education entirely to the State”. Let them pay for it themselves. And the Catholic education is a red herring. Apart from the fact that parents should not have to lie about their religious affiliation to get them into a better resourced school, governments State and Federal should be resourcing ALL public schools to a level of excellence. This Bourgeois Flight should be rendered unnecessary.
Peter Roebuck
A bargain, adrien.
My dog has her portrait hanging in the Laird on Punt Road, dressed as a leather queen. Strange stuff, but she doesn’t mind.
The Bourgeois Flight is unnecessary, but sadly one can’t convince an anxious Bourgeoisie. The other side of the coin of the Bourgeois Flight is known as “residualisation” of public schools — that is to say, they can be perceived as, and eventually transformed into, a ‘residual’ system — a ‘safety net’ schooling system rather than the strong, comprehensive, universal system they were designed to be. It is yet another chapter being written in the tragedy of the commons that so many seem prepared to stand by and let it happen. People perceive it to be in their own (read: their children’s) short-term interest to pull out of public education, and the result is a society that spends more money to attain an aggregate worse result.
In macroeconomic terms, it’s a mirror-image of the USA’s over-spending on health, but underachieving on health outcomes across the population.
We’re doing it to ourselves, and take umbrage at anyone who has the temerity to point it out.
Will anyone listen to Gonski? I’m hopeful, but then look how Ken Henry’s work got mothballed…
Go, you good thing! I love the smell of tinfoil in the morning! Smells like…chips on both shoulders!
I love how the authoritarian brain can hold two mutually exclusive propositions as both axiomatically true:
For instance –>
Public schools are staffed by incompetent, lazy, out-of-touch, do-nothings who are only in it for the holidays AND WHO ARE SOCIALLY ENGINEERING ENTIRE GENERATIONS IN A VAST COMMIE PLOT!
Helen said:
Aren’t all private schools in Australia non-profit though? So in the end all the money goes to providing education for the students who attend whether it be in recurrent expenditure or investment to fund future capital spending.
No private school gets more government funding than a public school and most get significantly less. If a similar approach was taken to medicare then the more the doctor charged over the nominal medicare rebate, then the lower the actual rebate would become.
There’s been a huge increase in the growth of semi-formal after-school tutoring. I wonder how much of that is parents making a rational economic decision to spend their money on tutors where they will not be penalized for spending extra on education for their children compared to sending their children to a private school where they will be?
Paul of Albury: I seriously doubt that “US Bases in X” == “X is vassal to US”. German’s got lots of US bases, but refused to follow the line on Iraq.
However, it would be an unhealthy act of subservience for the Australian government to turn a blind eye to crimes perpetrated by US servicepeople. But has that happened?
I don’t think it is necessary to have US bases on Australian soil. Do like the Vietnamese are doing with Cam Ranh Bay. Refurbish ports and open them to foreign warships and submarines. Russian and American vessels are very welcome.
That one snuck through.
[mod note: fixed now, thanks!]
In macroeconomic terms, it’s a mirror-image of the USA’s over-spending on health, but underachieving on health outcomes across the population. We’re doing it to ourselves, and take umbrage at anyone who has the temerity to point it out.
Mercurius: I had the impression that one of the reasons for the US’s inequality in school outcomes is the existence of school districts – 14,000 little governments in miniature each having the legal power to tax the locals for school system. But since property taxes are higher in white flight suburbia than poorer inner-city area, the schools in white flight areas are better funded than poorer areas. It sounds like a nice way to entrench inequality. (It also sounds like petty decentralization at work, but that’s just me.)
As a working teacher, Mercurius, have you observed similar forces at work in Australia?
Mercurius #58. You don’t make sense. Please expand your point if you wish it to be comprehended.
The one of mine you are responding to is straighforward enough.
@ 61:
I think you’ll find that the US force based in Germany are still, technically “occupation” troops.
Down and Out, how common historically is it to host perpetual foreign military bases without being a vassal state. West Germany was pretty much sponsored by the US after WW2 but the sponsor has perhaps overstayed? And the vassalage seems pretty much there already for us anyway – provide ‘ military assistance to the dominant state when requested to do so’ (wikipedia) – seem familiar?
On the private schools, I do think it’s a valid personal choice along the lines of ‘if you can’t beat them join them’ to send your own children to private schools. I don’t think the personal benefits are clear cut but ymmv. The real costs are to the community. Public policy that actively supports private schooling is wrong.
Down and Out of Sài Gòn – school zoning almost certainly affects property prices in Australia (where schools implement it). And sometimes boundaries can be ridiculously close to the school itself – there was one high school I was looking it at where if you live more than just 300m away from the school on one side then you don’t qualify to attend (unless you can get in through a scholarship).
My belief is that public schools that implement zoning are really de-facto private schools – but the barrier to entry isn’t school fees, its the ability to afford real estate in the zone.
Chris @ 60, perhaps another comparison could be made to government outsourcing of other functions. There have been plenty of functions outsourced to private enerprise one way or another, why not education? In the end, as long as parents and kids have a choice and reasonable information about the educational possibilties what is argument yet as to why the public OR private means of delivery is superior?
It is the quality of education involvement of parents and students, and the outcomes that is most important for a given quantum of money, not whether the provider of that service is in the private or public sector?
Marks,
A far more important set of parameters for educational outcomes are certainty and uniformity.
a).The principle objective of private industry is to make the most profit for the least effort.
b).The principle objective of government (western enlightened) is to provide the most effort for the least cost.
c).The principle objective for corrupt governments is to gain the most control and maintain the highest credibility for the least delivery of public good.
I personally opt for b). until it is failing. At which point I vote differently.
Option a) is not exactly equal to our private schooling system as it is by and larger as our public schools as they are are largely an ideological extention of our religious culture. However, if the schooling system was handed en mass to our business culture the outcome would be very different. The connection is as simple as ABC.
Mecurius at 57 says “The Bourgeois Flight is unnecessary, but sadly one can’t convince an anxious Bourgeoisie.”
I agree with him. The desire to have your children attend a non-government school often boils down to a desire to purchase a peer group.
All of the research indicates that a high achieving student can do well at any school. Recent research from ACER on PISA results indicates that what matters in schools is the average wealth of the student cohort. A poor student gets better results at a school where the average wealth of the student cohort is higher than their individual wealth. The result of the higher average wealth is a calmer, more academically focused environment that is provided by a student cohort that is mainly focused on academic achievement and has the benefit of family support for schooling.
Unfortunately for advocates of public schooling, very few parents are willing to take the chance of their child not doing well at a school with a large proportion of students from families not supportive of schooling, even if their child is likely to do well, simply as a result of coming from a supportive family.
I have only discussed the area of academic results. There would also be parents who are fearful of racial issues, bullying etc. that they believe would be more prevalent at public schools.
Having said all of that I am stilll sceptical of the solution being to spend more funds on schooling, especially secondary schooling. I don’t think you can “beat” the home environment. If we are to increase funding then I think the best chance is to flood vulnerable families with support while the children are still in the womb and up to 7.
BilB @ 69 said:
A goal of educational outcomes should be uniformity? Really? I would much prefer that the goal be maximising the potential of all students. Not attempting to ensure that everyone comes out the same….
I agree with you 85% Gustaf. Also the annecdotal evidence that private schooling provides better results is in fact evidence that higher incomed families yield better educational outcomes rather than private schooling yields better education outcomes. As you say.
Uniformity of opportunity, Chris. Outcomes will of course vary. See Gustaf.
@chris #71
I’d be awfully surprised if BilB wasn’t referring to a goal of conformity of educational inputs rather than to outcomes, I really would.
New South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill was educated at a public school (Henley High).
Just sayin.
BilB @ 73 – then broadly speaking I think I agree with you there. Of course uniformity of opportunity is something that is awfully hard to do, and neither public nor private schools achieve anything like that. If you just spend more money on schools with high levels of disadvantage then those who attend the school who aren’t from disadvantaged backgrounds also gain so you still don’t have uniformity of opportunity.
The compensation that you need to provide has to be very narrowly targeted to achieve uniformity of opportunity. And I’m still a bit unsure about what uniformity of opportunity in practice would mean – if the goal is to lead to maximising potential of all (and that may mean spending significantly more on some students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds as well as those who are talented) then I’d be happy with that.
I think that saying that a high achieving student will do well at any school, whilst it may be true, is a bit misleading as they still may have done significantly better at a specific school. And that can be an awful waste of potential.
Perhaps the ” give a shit ” value by parents has an effect on both family income and educational outcomes of their children.
My kids were “publicly schooled” till we( my wife and I) got sick of them being discriminated against ( them being white, bright and well behaved )
Then we sacrificed a lot to have them in ” catholic school ” ( No, i’m not a catholic), the difference was immediately positive.
If the “catholic school” failed, we would have sacrificed more and “home schooled”
My wife and I made a conscious decision NOT to blame anyone else if our three kids failed.
And I’m glad we did.
p.s Obviously and unfortunately, my wife and I were publicly educated, so we earn with our hands and backs. And we definitely ” give a shit ” about our kids education.
A bargain, adrien.
Yeah. It’s based on the Ukiyo-E tradition Japanese woodblock prints. They were developed because artists in Japan got tired of selling only to rich people.
My dog has her portrait hanging in the Laird on Punt Road, dressed as a leather queen. Strange stuff, but she doesn’t mind.
Sounds cool, like to see it.
Adrien, not funding private businesses from the public purse is not the same thing as “transferring education entirely to the State”. Let them pay for it themselves.
Yeah but phasing out private school is the same thing. I’m all in favour of ceasing the subsidization of elite schools, but those who send their kids there argue that the progressive taxation system forces them to subsidize the public system. Around and around it goes.
I’m just saying you can’t phase out private schools because the political opportunity does not exist and that rendering all education under state control might have negative consequences.
Just a thought.
Chris at 76 says “I think that saying that a high achieving student will do well at any school, whilst it may be true, is a bit misleading as they still may have done significantly better at a specific school. And that can be an awful waste of potential.”
That is true but the research doesn’t indicate that they would do “significantly” better. The students who would do significantly better are those students from supportive but poor families. They would do significantly better being in a cohort of students from wealthier backgrounds.
When Mercurius talks about residualisation, that is what it often comes back to. If wealthier students are “forced” to attend state schools, all students benefit from the social capital they bring with them, and the wealthier student’s results don’t necessarily suffer.
As I said above, parents don’t want to take what they think is a chance with their own child’s future, so to be safe they look for an independent school where the students are more likely to come with similar values and attitudes to schooling.
The result is state schools are increasingly the home of students from families that don’t value schooling or who can’t afford non-government schools.This demonstrates why families that can’t afford high fee schools are increasingly enrolling their children in low fee Christian schools.
Jaques @ 75:
John Winston Howard also went to a public secondary school (Canterbury Boys’ High School), but Joseph Benedict Chifley did not (he went to the Patrician Brothers’ School in Bathurst).
Just sayin’
Fran 42,
Roebuck’s death didn’t have anything to do with his taste for sado-masochism, did it?
Just askin’.
Fran,
The cricket on ABC won’t be the same.
Roebuck was a “one of kind”.
Another “one of a kind”, O’Keefe , give us comment;
http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/tributes-flow-for-maestro-of-cricket-writing-peter-roebuck-20111113-1ndj2.html
Sam @82,
Evidence please?
If you don’t produce any, then we know what YOU are.
@63, Interesting question Down and Out, I’ll try to do it justice.
But you are presuming that “as a working teacher” I have far more scope to give you an authoritative answer than I actually do. I can only speak to the small-scale scene that I’ve experienced in city and country schools.
I would say that, until now, the fracturing and fragmenting forces driving inequality that you identify at schools in the USA are far more muted here in Australia; because we have (for how much longer?) large public systems. The NSW system is one of the world’s largest, if not the largest, single educational administrations (outside China or India, I would suggest).
HOWEVER, with the push to devolve management down to the schools level, one can predict that soon our educational landscape will become a de facto version of the USA situation — we won’t have school districts as such, but, with “every school for themself”, we might as well.
Won’t that be fun!?
Jumpy, try googling ‘Peter Roebuck caning’ .
Billb @ 69.
That may be so, but others have argued the opposite. So why not empower parents to be able to make the choice rathe than tell them what they must have?
The arguments you make can also be applied to other services such as water supply, power, medical etc.
@Sam, you shouldn’t have gone there. It’s gratuitous.
Sam said’
“”Jumpy, try googling ‘Peter Roebuck caning’ .”
No, you provide proof. And stand by it, under your name.
I truly don’t give a rats what he did in his leisure time but a claim should/must be backed up by the claimant.
A principle I am sure you agree with.
Tig, au contraire, it’s the truth.
Re: Peter Roebuck – I might have misheard as I wasn’t really paying attention at the time, but I think a radio report said he had just been interviewed by the police? Is “found dead” in this case just media code for suicide?
@Chris – it would seem so.
We were told on the TV news tonight that Peter Roebuck took his own life. I vote we don’t speculate about why. Otherwise we risk sharing misinformation.
MH@9 and on US bases, vassal state context. Time to reflect on Hugh White’s assessment :
“…. how likely is a US-China clash? Hard to say, of course, but I would give an intuitive estimate of between 5 per cent and 10 per cent over the next decade. If that seems too gloomy, bear in mind that preparing for a war with one another is now clearly the primary strategic priority for both countries.”
With the recent track record of US armed security adventures and war on everythung, would it not be an opportune time now to progress as a nation and become a influential middle power rather than stay a deputy sheriff?
Probably, if there were a military clash between the US and China and the US escalated it into a war, under the provisions of ANZUS Australia would choose to join the issue regardless of the existence of a US Marine base near Darwin.
The interesting question is if China decided to commit a provocation against the US, would China choose to attack a US base near Darwin?
My guess is that this is unlikely. The first point of confrontation is much more likely to be around Taiwan or in the South China Sea.
And what would that choice be Marks @ 87? A bad education for their kids or a good one? Surely education should all be as good as it can with the available resources, without favouritism.
How does that translate to water supply? Some people are going to get good water and others bad?
This is Australia, still, the country of equality of opportunity. That is what makes it great.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei responded to the news on Thursday re new U.S. Military presence in Australia, by saying Chinese officials “hope relevant countries’ bilateral cooperation will be conducive to the Asia-Pacific region’s security, peace and stability.”
Dn’t forget too, earlier in the year on her trip to China Gillard said closer military ties with China would promote good relations and maintain regional peace and prosperity
When it comes to educating my kids – I don’t get a say. Mrs Razor is a chalkie and has worked in government schools in NW WA with the most under-priveldged, Governemnt schools in Victoria, Catholic Schools in the NT and both small and elite (the most expensive in WA at the time) private schools in WA.
Based on her +20 years of experience I bleed money sending them to very expensive private schools.
As it is I am very happy with the decision and the outcomes being achieved.
We have very good friends through Mothers group who send their kids to the local public school. They just don’t have the same attitude towards academic excellence as we do. I am happy for our kids to be friends and just as happy they aren’t in the same class as our kids.
In my experience, it takes active neglect of public schools by govts – and systematic underfunding – for private schools to maintain any edge they might have.
As soon as that stops (eg VIC under Bracks/ Brumby), and its left to the market, private schools start falling down the league tables.
Brian 93, there is no need anymore to speculate about Roebuck. He jumped out of his hotel window while being questioned by a South Efrican policeman about an alleged sexual assault.
No billb @ 96, it goes to the proposition that I suspect is being avoided here. Services like education, medical, water, power, transport can be supplied by either the public or private sectors. So why not let parents and students choose whichever they want, and fund both adequately?
I second the view that we don’t speculate, Brian. Unless there is compelling evidence that Roebuck has done something that is the business of others, I regard it as inappropriate to comment.
In the absence of criminal or seriously tortious conduct, we are entitled to recall him as a man of charm and insight, who was thought of very well by people within the cricketing community and on its fringes.
Snobbery, just rank snobbery.
The idea that public school parents per se are naive peasants who don’t have a desire for academic excellence, simply because they don’t have the personal qualities that you do – i.e. money, money and money – is simply confirmation bias, don’t care if your wife’s a chalkie, it’s crap.
My public-school educated daughter graduated from VCE with a TER which easily got her into Melbourne University, which was what she wanted. However when Graduation night rolled around and awards were given out and achievements spoken of, it was obvious that she was by no means an edge case and, despite my motherly bias, nowhere near dux of the school.
SOME parents at the school are less interested in academic excellence for the very good reason that their kids are interested in non-academic excellence – Trades, hospitality and the Arts. My daughter had some of these kids in her classes and some are continuing friends. I am proud for her to know them. I do not think that being friends with someone who wants to go into a trade or the restaurant world is some kind of contagion.
They just don’t have the same attitude towards academic excellence as we do.
This, from the bloke who made his career in the army. LOL.
This is interesting IMHO
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/05/women-bloggers-hateful-trolling
I’m happy to announce that, having been plagued by malware warnings which couldn’t be properly addressed with the former setup, the Cast Iron Balcony has moved to http://www.castironbalcony.com.
*Pops cork*
Obstreperal outpourings recommencing soon!
@Eric Sykes, that discussion has been reinvigorated around the femmosphere this last week or so. I take issue with them referring to abusive threats as ‘trolling’ though – it’s cyberbullying via rank intimidation. Those issuing the threats don’t just want to disrupt the online discussion, they want us to STFU.
“snobbery”
You reckon? I call it plain daft. I’d rather whack that 50k in fees on the mortgage.
They saw him comin’.
Sam @ 104, military service does not preclude intellectual achievements. I spent, I suspect, a lot longer in the Army than Razor (admittedly over half of it as a WOFTAM), and I served with some extremely intelligent and academically well-qualified people.
Despite disagreeing with Razor more often than not, I have a great deal of respect for his intelligence.
tigtog @ 107 Yes cyberbullying and intimidation for sure. Trolls one can choose to ignore (all be it tuff to sometimes), but someone(s) theatening ones life over and over again is not so easy to brush off.
Gustaf @ 80 – if you have the time, any chance you can post some pointers to the research you are talking about? I have a daughter who is starting school in a year or two so I’m quite interested in such things (all the schools under consideration are public schools, but the demographics are quite different). I’m also curious as to exactly what you mean by the social capital that students from wealthier backgrounds would bring. And whatever it is, it seems a bit counter intuitive that gathering that capital in one area (say a private school) does not help much, but that depriving a school of it would hurt.
Helen @ 103 – perhaps I’m reading you incorrectly, but maybe its a matter of degree rather than whether or not there are some parents who really value academic excellence (and I’d disagree that the Arts are not considered part of academic excellence at many private schools). Just as an example, where I went to school it was pretty much assumed that the vast majority of students would end up going to a “good” university. The main discussion was around what course you’d be doing (I won’t deny that there are also downsides to that sort of culture).
Chris – what is commonly ignored in the comparison you give in para 2 is the fact that private schools (1) are able to, and do, turf out underperforming students and (2) are populated in the main by kids whose parents already have a large measure of privilege. Yeah, yeah, I know all the parents at Wesley are taxi drivers working 23 hour days, :-/ just to get that urban factoid out of the way… therefore, close to 100% of the kids at a private school will either be suited to academic performance or pushed into it by the tiger parents. The remainder, see (1), will mainly be turfed out by year 10 or so. On the other hand, a public school will have a cohort of kids like these, plus a cohort of kids who have no interest in uni but would like to run a restaurant or mechanic garage one day. See how this works? The fact that a well-set-up public school like ours has a smaller number of kids entering Melbourne Uni is not because its public school germs makes kids dumber. It’s because there is only a sub-section of kids who are headed that way and the rest will go into trades (and in former years straight into jobs, but employers have dropped the ball on on the job training now.) Conversely, Private School germs will not make your kid brainier. Attending our school will not make Little Johnny less likely to get into the university and course of his choice, if that is what he is working towards. Attending a private school will simply mean that all the other little Johnnies who aren’t interested inthe academic path will simply be weeded out.
Chris at 111, the report I was referring to is
Challenges for Australian Education: Results from PISA 2009 Chapter 8
http://www.acer.edu.au/ozpisa/reports/
You also said “I’m also curious as to exactly what you mean by the social capital that students from wealthier backgrounds would bring. And whatever it is, it seems a bit counter intuitive that gathering that capital in one area (say a private school) does not help much, but that depriving a school of it would hurt.”
What I mean is, students from wealthier families tend to come to school with attitudes of expecting to do well, knowing the rules of school, having good verbal ability etc.
When lots of kids have those skills you don’t gain much more from being with other kids who also have them.
When you don’t have those skills you gain a lot from being around those who do.
My own experience is that at public primary school, I was usually in the top five or six in the class. My parents and I were happy.
The public high school, however, that I HAD to go to locally(because of residential requirements) had a bad reputation, so my parents sent me to private school. I went to uni., but NOT of the public school friends got there. NOT because they wanted to become tradies, (because there was a separate system for them in my day), nor I presume because they suddenly became stupid. The only variable was the different school. That was a decision that my parents were able to make. I would also note that public schools in upper middle class areas had good uni attendence rates. However, there was zoning to keep kids like me from working class areas out. It was fine to have good schools in working class areas – after all, we need good tradies and clerks. However, zoning of schools in those days meant that if you were from a working class area, the ONLY way you could get to a good school was to go private.
One of the more perverse examples of this became evident at a school I taught at in the early 1990s. The public high school was in one of the more salubrious areas on Sydney, where property prices would have been in the top 1-2% of the market. I assumed (naively) that the students would be the cream of the crop, when in fact they were very substantially, unruly, possessed of a strong sense of entitlement, disengaged and on the whole, no more cognitively competent than students in the south-western suburbs.
Large numbers of them had indeed been turfed from surrounding private schools, either because there had been some family break up resulting in financial strains and family dischord and an unwillingness to support private education. The children, unsurprisingly, were annoyed that their existing social networks and access to the good life had been seriously damaged and it showed in the way that they dealt with each other and with teaching staff. Many of them did however, manage continued access to various illicit substances and again that showed in the way they operated at school.
I’ve often taught in ‘difficult’ schools — some of them more difficult that this place, but nowhere was the disconnect between my expectations and reality larger than at this particular place, and I’d also add that the most difficult students at this place were as troubling as any I saw out in the South West of Sydney, who at least had better explanators for their disengagement from learning.
Helen @ 112 – just my personal experience at a private school, but kids who did not do well academically were not turfed out (there were extra classes for students at both ends of the spectrum of academic talent). The drop-out rate was very very low (after all parents are pretty wary about changing schools for their children).
However, given that there were large intakes of students at various points (eg high school, year 10 etc) as well as scholarships offered there was certainly some self-selection at work.
Chris, I too have experience of both private and public schools.
Gustaf @ 113 – thanks for the link!
Ok, I agree with that. But similarly if you say have a good level of those skills, but manage to get into an environment where most people have an excellent level of those skills won’t you tend to do better than in an environment where most people have an average level? The difference in outcome may be small, but you’d expect some change?
Fran said:
Reminds of a friend who has commented than in his opinion the only difference between public and private schools is the quality of the drugs available
Fran, are you going to tell us the name of the salubriously located public high school 20 years ago? I think there would be a short list of five: Vaucluse High, Dover Heights High, Killara High, St Ives High and Turramurra High.
Conversely, Private School germs will not make your kid brainier.
Smarter, no. More likely to get into get into university than a kid with equal smarts who attends a public high school, yes. This has been shown time and again. Why? Better facilities, better spoon feeding, less classroom disruption*.
* Not necessarily the fault of the kids who do the disrupting.
Helen @ 117 – yes and it may well have happened (turfing out students). But I don’t think you can reasonably generalise “private schools” or “public schools” in a particularly productive manner. You really need to compare specific schools.
That being said, I ended up at a private school because the public school system had no flexibility in terms of age intake when I started. I was 2-3 months too young – which is pretty much nothing when you look at the variation in ability of children starting school – and they refused to accept me. Back then I would have had to wait another year. So I ended up at a private school that was willing to be flexible.
So if its one thing I’d like to see in a school system is acceptance of some variation in policies between schools and lots flexibility within schools. This helps avoid systemic problems.
Chris,
“But similarly if you say have a good level of those skills, but manage to get into an environment where most people have an excellent level of those skills won’t you tend to do better than in an environment where most people have an average level? The difference in outcome may be small, but you’d expect some change?”
Yes, you are right. You would expect some change, but I think it would be very small. I think the anxiety for parents is that they don’t want to take any chances.
@ Sam: Once at Uni however, the public school kids do better, this has also been demonstrated time and time again and Universities now take account of this in their intake procedures apparently (according to the interviewee on the Lateline piece about crammers and the gaming of the NSW HSC exams). So maybe that equation will no longer be weighted so heavily in favour of the Private School students in the future.
Once at Uni however, the public school kids do better
If you take two kids, one public and one private, with the same uni entrance scores, public does better. However, overall, private still do better.
Universities now take account of this in their intake procedures apparently
That’s interesting. I didn’t think they had the discretion.
Cutting through the crap here: whats been demonstrated time and again is that the public system fosters a merit-based competitive system, while the private system allows wealth to augment merit as a determinant of success.
Its a protectionist measure – for those who fear open competition.
For those who laud the merits of competition, there’s only one choice: public. There’s no head start. It simply down the boy or girl themselves.
Gustaf @ 122 – re: anxiety – yes, its not a decision which is easily fixed if you get it wrong.
su @ 123 – if you’re talking about the research done in 2005 by Dobson, it shows that for the same university entrance scores that the non selective public school students do the best, followed by the Catholic school students, then the general independent schools and finally at the bottom the selective government schools.
So if its cramming or gaming then the selective government schools do it the best! But an alternative explanation would be that the selective nature of the schools gets the most out of the students given their natural talent. Which would correlate with the results – non selective government schools and Catholic schools being the least selective and independent and selective government schools being the most selective based on academic talent.
Lefty E said:
Down to the boy or girl themselves and the tutors their parents may hire to help them along
A public school environment is certainly no guarantee of an even playing field.
Dear David Irving,
Thank you for the unsolicited support.
I was sitting here wondering how I had managed to get an Academic Scholarship to High school, a uni degree with a couple of prizes and an invitation to do honours and yet I am apparently a moron.
As a direct entry into RMC Duntroon I was fortunate to mix with ADFA graduates. I am highly critical of the ADFA system (but not because of the highly public sexual harrassment issues). But they are a very intelligent group – much brighter than me.
Apparently they can, Sam, I suppose it could come into play if a course is oversubscribed and you have a bunch of students all with the same ATAR competing for the remaining few places. I found the interview; it was with Prof Schwartz of Macquarie: Link
Further, this argument (about public v private schools) is situated in an environment where
-Governments both Federal and State have treated the public education system with disgraceful neglect while giving out far too much pork to the private system
-The PR merchants of the private system, the “independent” school lobby group and their political apologists have fostered a climate of fear and relentless competition to the point where parents new to secondary school are actually scared of the public system
So that we are in danger of a two-tiered system whereby the majority of parents scramble out of the public system leaving it as a system of last resort for all “those others” about whom, of course, we don’t care, as they don’t matter.
Sam asked:
No, I’m not, but I can say that Killara High School had quite a good reputation as recently as 5 years ago. I actually taught casual there in the early 1990s and it seemed pretty well run and had, as far as I can tell, a fairly positive school culture.
Looking for a non-god bothering school in Queensland, a school driven by secular ideas, one that keeps “religious instruction” to a minimum but does encourage the study of comparative religion? There are (only) a couple of schools in Queensland driven by secular ideas, none of them are in the state system. Deeply sad I know, but true.
You’re welcome, Razor. It was partly motivated by my own stung pride, I must admit – people who assume soldiers are stupid really shit me.
su @ 129 – in South Australia there’s been a scheme for quite a long time to help students from schools with low university participation rate get into uni. They automatically get bonus points added to their tertiary entrance score. And even if you don’t go to one of those schools you can apply for bonus points if you also qualify for some types of welfare.
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/student/admission/year12/#fairway
Lefty E is right, but you’ll never cut through the crap on this issue because everyone’s been to school and everyone’s an expert on education.
Add to the fact that most people don’t have the wit or insight to see beyond the propaganda spewed out by the private school lobby and you have a ridiculously inequitous situation that wouldn’t be tolerated in any supposedly civilised country.
Raze & DI, nowhere did I write that all soldiers are stupid. No doubt some of them are quite smart. But smart is not the same thing as giving primacy to academic excellence.
So that we are in danger of a two-tiered system
In danger? That’s a good one. It’s already here. Other than those people with an ideological commitment to public schools and those people who can’t afford private schools, who sends their kids to public secondary schools anymore?
That’s an easy one, Sam. People who think that their children will get a better education.
I know some such parents and they are right.
Maybe such a thought is beyond your limited parameters, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
And I know some who have been blinded by the private school propaganda, sent their offspring to an elite private school and now that their child’s failed uni twice, they kind wish they’d saved their money. Anecdotal I know, but no worse than most of the crap above.
Well Adrian, if the education is better at public schools, I guess all the people who say that all those public funds going to private schools are giving them an unfair advantage, must be wrong.
Of course – and I admit this runs counter, somewhat, to my previous post – there are some high quality public secondary schools. Thus we see people scrambling to move into their catchment areas. Unfortunately this drives up the price of houses in those areas, and so what they save on the school fees they spend on real estate.
So, I’ll rephrase:
Other than those people with an ideological commitment to public schools and those people who can’t afford private schools and those people who can buy into Fran’s salubrious suburbs, who sends their kids to public secondary schools anymore?
As for the people who spent a motza on private education only to see their kids fail uni (or not get there at all), I know people in exactly that situation. It gnaws away at them like you wouldn’t believe. But no one said that a private education is a lay down misere to academic success. It just increases the probability by a lot.
As a parent of kids at private schools – I don’t actually mind if they end up at uni or not – at least I will have set them up to take the opportunities if they want to.
Report from Germany re school system: Depends radically upon which state you live in and not just in terms of the curriculum, but in terms of the whole system (and I’m being really serious.) In Southern Germany, where arguably the highest academic standard is set, there is a common comprehensive primary school of 4 yrs: (Grades 1-4). Thereafter, there is a three tier system, based roughly on your kids academic ability and their vocational future. This is of course way out of sync with modern reality, but the general idea is that there is a school for workers, a school for bureaucrats and middle management and then a school for the academics– which is probably something like the selective schools, except there are a lot more of them. There are also private schools, but these are mainly of the niche variety and are kind of looked at over the top of one’s newspaper. And, it’s certainly not a perfect system.
But I’m pretty sure that all those Australians sending thie kids to private schools, because of the ‘superior academic context’, wouldn’t like this system either, because their kids just may not get into the right school.
And then, you might realise what a distortion private schools have caused to our education system. How, finance has been used to change the way that we measure academic success. Sam, actually says it most succinctly above: the academic success of getting into uni is just so much easier when your parents fork over the dollaros and you go to a private school (Keeps taxi costs own too!). It would be actually fantastic if the universities really start differentiating between the two school systems, like su says (although on a practical level, I would find that a hard thing to do, how would you weight such grades: ~ on school fees?
)
OK Sam, I may have verballed you a bit, but you still made the unwarranted assumption that the military hive mind does not value intellectual excellence.
Well, whichever way you swing, the Australian education system is definitely been doing something wrong over the last decade: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-15/coag-report-shows-australian-students-not-performing/3666272
Peter Garrett sighting on the news tonight. Labor are unfortunately going to start linking school attendance for kids in Aboriginal communities in NT with welfare.
“Your kid hasn’t turned up to school enough times this term, so your welfare has been cut off for x amount of time”. Yeah you go and sell that policy Garrett, it’s supposedly being voted on next week.
Also Bess Price will be running for the Country Liberal Party at the next election, unsuprisingly she thinks it’s a great idea.
Jacques – to be fair to Bess Price she has supported those sort of intervention policies for quite a while and would be running for the Country Liberal Party because of her beliefs, not have those beliefs because she is running for the Country Liberal party.
The people who edited the 7:30 report video had a bit of fun though. From the transcript:
Full COAG report on our education in PDF is
here. I note the ABC didn’t provide the actual name of the report — Mr Denmore?
Lefty E, you should be careful about reports like that. It’s based on rankings and categories, but if China is educating more and more of its population the rankings are bound to change; if Australia is tightening the eligibility requirements for the top grade the categorizations will change. Need to be careful with the details!
It’s the National Day of Action for Public Education today.
Please go here, sign the petition and send a message to Mr Gonski cc to your local pollie. It doesn’t take long!
Your taxes at work!!
Helen @ 148 – heh, rather selective statistics there. From the APH library:
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/bn/sp/SchoolsFunding.pdf
Total government funding (per student) for:
Public schools – $12,639
Non government schools – $6,607
Big difference there! Even if you include private fees and donations to private schools:
Catholic: – $10,745
Independent – $15,062
(Average of non government): $12,489
The government school figures don’t include private donations so the amount of funding is higher than listed above, probably quite a bit so in wealthy areas.
Sam asked:
My kids had a mix. Currambena (an A S Neill (Summerhill) school) until about year 4 and then public thereafter (though Leni did get a couple of years at ‘The International School’ in early HS). It was gone by the time Max was old enough.
Thanks Helen!
BTW, the key figure that you quote IMO is the following:
I know that this doesn’t trouble some people, but it should if they can peer beyond their own vested interests or limited experience.
@98
” I am happy for our kids to be friends and just as happy they aren’t in the same class as our kids.”
I wonder how they’d feel if they knew you were sneering at them behind their backs? And I thought right wingers made a virtue of cherishing children, not despising them. Anyway perhaps a stint with the lefty micks will purge conservatism form this generation of OBRs
@98 – I don’t snear at them behind their backs – we have open discussions about why we send our kids where we want to. They say they are happy with the local Primary School (which is pretty good apparently) and we say we prefer to pay for Private Schools and they say we are bonkers because they are always off on overseas holidays and driving nice cars etc while we scrimp and save, drive 11 year old cars and feel priveledged to make it further than 200km from the CBD for a holiday.
Oh and as for “a stint with the lefty micks” – the only stint with them shall be on the playing fields where we shall be victorious over them as long as they aren’t up to their old tricks of having Yr12s repeat in order to compete in First Teams.
Hi. everyone. I’m back from the dead. almost literally. Thanks muchly for the visit. Merc. and phone call tigtog. (Have sent you an e-ail).
Basically on 7 October I was about 2 breahs away from death, and am very lucky to be alive. Have moved house to a more salubrious and safer part of Armidale. Will be having my cataract op in February.
Am on oxygen and a little weaker, but still going.
Wrote the conclusion to the Halifax chapter while in hospital, but have only just got back on line, hence the delay in letting youse know what was gappening.
All your well wishes and kind thoughts helped me survive..
Now about to check LP and see what I missed.
If this message is a bit garbled, apologies. Catarcts etc.
Love you all,
PB.
And the card from you all, cheered ne considerably. (Told U I wasn’t thiking straight.. Have been on what I suspect were some pretty weird near death experiences.
Welcome back!
Oh YAY!!! I am so glad to see you Paul! Well, your avatar, but you know.
Is the new place nice? Do you like it?
Typical that you should still be writing on your sickbed!
Welcome back!
So pleased to have you back, Paul.
Helen.
Paul,
New place is great. Smallewr. safer. quiewter. all in. a great improvement on the old.
And then, I woke up this morming and almost threw up ovrer the TV hearing Gillard’s new ALP uranium policies. These guys are mad. Spose theyre backing on trhe fact the electorate won’t b43 mad enough to vote foer Abbott.
Can you imagine what it was like being news deprived for 6 weeks except for the two nights I spent in private hospir5al at the sleep clinic. Fortunately I don’t have to wear a Hannibal Lector mask. but it looked like a possibility for a while.
Thanks Fine. (Cross posted.)
Helen, also wrote some poems and fragments of poems. Had planned to write a long epic on Life Death Resurrection. but that Idea has faded spmewhat since my recovery. Currently reading up bigtime on slavery in 18th cen6tury Virginia as background to John Moseley, a runaw3ay slave who ened up out here as a convict.
Now to check out some other posts.
Missed all you guys/
Paul
I am glad to see you back posting on LP.
I look forward to your next posting on” Being a History Head and other things.”
Till then recover well and be well.
Cheers
Dear Paul, so glad you are getting better, welcome back, missed you. Stay well and happy. Best, Eric.
Welcome back, Paul Burns.
I, for one, was rather worried…
Welcome back, Paul!
So, was there a white light? Did you see the vague outline of civil war generals, waiting to show you around?
Glad to see you back on deck, PB.
for those interested in it, I have a blog post about Japanese mobile phone social life. I think it might be a phenomenon!
Great to see you back Paul
I’m very glad to see you’ve survived, Paul – we’ve all missed you.
Thank you all for your well wishes. Muvh appreciated.
fGreg M, I haveave a post ready to go. packed away somewhere. Need to get rge friends who packed everything up to find it. My first post on my blog miht be some poems I wroye in gospital/Thouh I’m never satisfied with my poetry which is why I don’t publish/post much.
Re near death experiebces. I was two breaths away from death and brought back bu an afrenalin shot in the arm. I gather I qas out to it for an hour. Two very interesting things happened. I revived with a much increased vocab for at least a wqeek remembering the precise word needed remembered from all the books I’d read in my life.
Secondly, I think i worked out the cosmology of the spirit. flesah and soul. Souls are tied to the rim of the earth and are part of the earth – spirits etc but do9n’t stay there forever. Only till everyone important in their life has died.
As for God, we invented gim jer – the catholic fellow, the protestant fellow. Allah, Jwhovah. Zeus, wrc.
Apolohies fir spellimg errors but can’t see the keyboarf vwey well.
I’m glad to hear you have a better place to live Paul, welcome back. What a time you’ve had.
Glad to see you back, Paul!
I’m late to the welcome home party PB — troubles with my internet at home (damn you Optus!) but it’s good to see you back and posting. Along with the others, I wish you a speedy recovery to optimal health.
Paul Burns, welcome back comrade!
Yay PB and good health
Welcome back Paul. I hope your recovery is quick and free of complications.
PB,
Welcome back! Your life has been more eventful than the roundabout we know as politics, methinks.
Heya Paul B, good to hear from you and thank you for sharing such personal experiences and thoughts on them. Look forward to your poetry. An hour you said you were out? It reminds me of
Blake
ootz,
There was another experience incredibly personal and quiye peculiar which I’ll try and share if I can write it properly. At one stage the authoreities flew me to and from Newcastle to see if I could have an operation on the massive cyst in my good lung. (No luck- to dangerous.)
I was retaining lots of fluid and they were gfiving me diuretcs to gey ot out of me. In the ambulanve on the way back, all aLONE, WRAPPED IN A HUGE JIND OF NAPPY, i WET MYSELF. bUT THIS WAS NOT LIUKE AN OLD MAN WETTING HIMSELF. iT WAS IF i HAD BEEN TRANSPOTED BACK TO THE VERY WARLIEST DAYS OF MY LIFE AND i WAS A LITTLE BABY GURGLING WITH DELIGHT AT HAVING A LONG, LUXURIOUS PEE,. (Pressed caps axxidentally_ I gurgled in absolute deight, knowing my moyhrt would seen come and change me. When me, oom yje ambo, as an adult realised whay was happening and how deep I’d tapped into forgotten memories, I burst inyo uproarious laughter. Nearly dying takes you some stranfe places in your subcomxcious, but to the earliest days of life, laughing like a baby at the delight of it all. Wow. I didn’t expect that.
Good to see you back in the land of the living, Paul.
Good on you Paul, long may you prosper.
Paul, your comment above is like poetry, with typing style and caps, to me anyway. There is something ultimately satisfying about letting go. Like pissing yourself can be bliss, in a fundamental way. We just tend to get too distracted by the human transport system that takes us through the ages to remember.
You had a specially interesting life trip, I guess. With your long term health situation and your chosen profession to study through time. In some ways you probably have a knack to to be in ‘strange places’.
Don’t be too fussy with your poetry …. just slam it ….. right here …. as it comes ….. yeah!
Paul, great to see you back and in fine spirits.
As an incorrigible pedant, and serial helper-of-friends-with-technical-problems, I’d rig you up a system of mirrors or something so you could watch your fingers type. If I were only closer at hand, that is.
Hi Paul, all the best, you have been an inspiration with your dogged
endeavours. I was similarly overwhelmed during my daughters travails.
I am glad you seem to have located yourself to a more caring situation.
Don’t be too despondent about current affairs, I believe we are well served by our leader and her Government and today’s press conferences have, by comparison with Republican hopefuls, given hope for reason over ideology.
Flashback to February 2007:
http://www.news.com.au/top-stories/al-qaeda-praying-for-obama-win/story-e6frfkp9-1111112976069#ixzz1dttEIf3A
Do Howard’s Tory successors still believe this? If not, why have they not repudiated this belief?
An analysis of the McDonalds McRib (popular in the US, not aware if it’s sold here) found it contains a substance used to make Gym mats.
No-one who has ever eaten anything from McDonalds will be surprised. to say a Maccas hamburger bun has as much flavour as a gym mat would be over-complimentary.
One thing the McRib was said NOT to contain was ribs.
Via Lawyers, Guns and Money.
Let me add my pleasure at having you back, Paul Burns. Good to seet you alive and typing away from Armidale.
Welcome back Paul!