Unpredictable Roy Morgan has violated the laws of nature by publishing a face-to-face poll on a Thursday (which surely makes more sense than its normal practice of placing it in the news cycle dead zone of late Friday). This has Labor’s two-party lead up 1.5 per cent on the rather unusual previous face-to-face poll, which was half conducted before Christmas and half after new year, from 57-43 to 58.5-41.5. The figures show a pretty straightforward exchange between the two parties on the primary vote, with Labor up two points to 45.5 per cent and the Coalition down 1.5 to 35.5 per cent and the Greens steady on 10.
Elsewhere:
• After 22 years in parliament, Bob McMullan has announced he will not contest the next election, opening a vacancy in his safe Labor ACT seat of Fraser. Susanna Dunkerley of AAP reports that McMullan denies having been pushed, “despite recently declaring his intention to stick around for another term”. Furthermore, James Massola of the Canberra Times reports Annette Ellis is under pressure to make way for new blood in the other ACT seat, Canberra. Constitutional lawyer George Williams, who recently moved to Canberra and was reportedly Kevin Rudd’s choice to contest the safe Sydney seat of Blaxland in 2007, was said to be planning a preselection challenge against McMullan last October. However, a number of reports have identified the front-runner as Nick Martin, the party’s assistant national secretary. Other possible starters named by Massola are Andrew Leigh, Australian National University economist and prolific blogger, and Chris Bourke, a dentist of Aboriginal heritage who ran in Ginninderra at the 2008 ACT election. Both are factionally unaligned, which might be an asset as they seek to succeed the similarly placed McMullan. Another Canberra Times report mentions Michael Cooney, chief-of-staff to ACT MP Andrew Barr and former adviser to Mark Latham and Kim Beazley. Those whose names were floated but have since ruled themselves out are ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, Deputy Chief Minister Katy Gallagher and prime ministerial chief-of-staff Alister Jordan. Jonathan Pearlman of the Sydney Morning Herald reports an ALP national executive meeting on February 12 is likely to decide whether the candidate will be chosen locally or imposed externally.
• Samantha Maiden of The Australian reports Malcolm Turnbull is “being urged by supporters and business leaders to make a run for New South Wales premier in 2011”, firstly by replacing Peter Debnam in Vaucluse, which is located entirely within his existing electorate of Wentworth. Debnam has now confirmed what he describes as an “open secret”, that he won’t be contesting the seat at the next election. It had already been established that University of NSW deputy chancellor Gabrielle Upton would contest preselection, and numerous others have been named in connection with the seat: former John Howard chief-of-staff Arthur Sinodinos, restaurateur Peter Doyle, barrister Mark Speakman, UNSW Deputy Chancellor Gabrielle Upton and barrister Arthur Moses. Also mentioned was Paul Fletcher, before he landed his federal gig in Bradfield. There have also been suggestions, reiterated in Samantha Maiden’s report, that Joe Hockey might assume the seat with Turnbull’s support as an entree to the premiership.
• A couple of Labor national executive preselection determinations that had sliipped through the net. Michelle Rowland, a former Blacktown councillor and member of the Right faction, will contest Greenway, which the redistribution has transformed from 4.5 per cent Liberal to 5.8 per cent Labor (the sitting Liberal member, Louise Markus, will contest Macquarie). Holding Redlich lawyer Laura Smyth, whom Andrew Landeryou at VexNews links to the “Andrew Giles/Alan Griffin sub-faction of the Socialist Left”, will run in the outer eastern Melbourne seat of La Trobe, where Liberal member Jason Wood survived a 5.3 per cent swing in 2007 to hold on by 0.5 per cent. Human Services and Financial Services Minister Chris Bowen will contest McMahon, which is effectively a reincarnation of his existing abolished seat of Prospect.
• Chas Hopkins, 60-year-old former Perth Lord Mayor, has nominated for Labor preselection in the marginal Perth seat of Cowan, where the party has admitted it is struggling to find a replacement for Wanneroo mayor Jon Kelly who doesn’t share his connections with Brian Burke. Other confirmed starters are party state executive member Alex Banzic and political staffer Sam Roe.
Surprise – surprise.
The North Shore of Sydney does very well on the MySchool website.
Maybe all prospective parents should move to the North Shore (if they can afford it).
http://north-shore-times.whereilive.com.au/news/story/north-shore-schools-on-the-myschool-website/
[I was weak in maths when I arrived there, but I sometimes wonder if I and others might have done differently with another teacher…]
Kersebleptes
I had a teacher in primary school, small country villiage, 2 teachers, 2 classrooms about 30 kids.
He was an old bugger and had a drinking problem too, used to get angry, red in the face and scream that we were all guttersnipes. Used to whack the boys over the knuckles with a ruler also used a mean looking cane for their palms.
He had a whistle he’d blow and spit would fly everywhere.
I remember one day he was looking for something in the cupboard, couldn’t find it and the box of recorders was in his way so he threw them at us and said to take the #*%# in” things out of his sight. We reckeoned it was good, we all took home a free recorder.
If it wasn’t for the fact I got hit in the head by a recorder at school I might have learnt a lot more too 😉
Possum
[But it also shows the complete opposite as well.]
Don’t stop there – have you crunched any data yet? You are the one who demanded this information, so you’d better be able to make it worth something. Otherwise you will have been wRONg and an even ‘bigar gooose’ than I. 😆
vera
[If it wasn’t for the fact I got hit in the head by a recorder at school I might have learnt a lot more too]
My excuse is being hit in the scone with a blackboard duster at regular intervals 😆
JV went:
[Don’t stop there – have you crunched any data yet? ]
If all the nosey bastards would just piss off for a couple of hours and stop clogging the site up, I might be able to get enough data to do something with! What is it with these parents and their curiosity over their kids’ schools -don’t they know there’s more important things trying to be done!! 😀
Come on, priorities people!
JV
LOL
Talking about teachers, gotta head off to Tafe and sign up for something to keep my brain active a couple of afternoons a week.
catch ya later
Don,
Yeah, maths and languages! All the language teachers at my high school were talented and larger-than-life: they were performers just as much as the drama teachers.
I was never hugely into languages, but now I really wish I had been. I could have had a great time, and learned things from first-class teachers that would have opened so many doors for me.
LOL! I totally missed this this morning:
Possum – #2505
My point exactly. A lot of the hits on the website are out of purient interest.
Yet the spinners are busy saying the hits prove how desperately needed the information was for parents to make informed choices.
BTW – I recognise your visit to the site is for the purpose of academic research, not purient interest.
Zoomster and Dario
I at no stage said that MySchools information should not be released, and at no stage did i suggest that MySchool website should not exist. Either at least read my post or be honest in your responses. The point i was making was this website will provide only minimal value and will do extremely little to improve the standard of education in this country.
We know these things at present Zoomster because Govt already have the information, all they are doing is making it public. Given that with the information at hand Govt have been unable to improve standards, giving parents the information will most likely make little difference. Given that there are masses of information available on any number of issues, and one of the things Australia does really well is complain, we’ll most likely just have a lot of complaining and buck-passing and not much real improvement.
And you point out that your school wasn’t doing as badly as you thought – that’s great. You’ll have noted the part where i wrote that one of the benefits may be that supposedly terrible state schools may be shown to be not so terrible. A point worth mentioning though is, are people more concerned with how their school is going or how their child is going? What’s better – good grades in a crap school or crap grades in a good school?
And i’m sorry Zoomster but whatever the intentions are one of the things that will be the result of this website is blaming teachers. Peruse the internet and you will find attacking teachers is one of the common threads in discussions. Education unfortunately is a political football, and teachers are regularly kicked. If a school is performing badly who will get the blame – not parents, not society, not governments, not students, that leaves teachers and their princpals.
And why do you attack me for citing parents as an obstacle for their child’s education, this is a fact. You are correct to cite social reasons as a contributor to this. But given that neither party really cares about that nothing much will change. You cite the suspected murderess, she seems like a good parent to me. A good parent is one who values education, regardless of how rough around the edges they are, rich, poor, ignorant or otherwise. But this also proves my point, that being such a person from such a background doesn’t mean you can’t care about your children.
You are wrong to draw conclusions that i was referring to poor people. The worst children i taught were defence kids, thoroughly ill-disciplined and their parents didn’t care a damn.
The point I was making is that this webiste will do next to nothing to improve education, and given the spruiking by Labor hacks this point is entitled to be made. And some of the criticisms of it are valid, and need to be addressed rather than dismissed. Teachers will be blamed; increased emphasis on testing leads to an increased teaching towards tests. You cannot claim to care about education and not take these valid points of view on board.
vera
See if they have an advanced statistics course including, say, Bayes’ theorem. You might enjoy that. 🙂
People are entitled to their opinions on the MySchools web-site and the information presented, but I think this “opinion” carries a lot of merit and should be taken into consideration by those who wish to express “their” opinion.
[Parents are hungry for information on schools ]
[The My Schools website, a federal government initiative launched yesterday, is a new attempt to introduce two seemingly innocuous concepts – transparency and accountability – into the landscape of school choice. Its critics argue that a mere website listing different attributes of schools, including a snapshot of the literacy and numeracy skills of the school cohort (as tested under the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) will misrepresent school performance and unfairly discriminate against some schools. While information on the site is not intended to be used as a league table, the potential to crunch data from the site to produce a ranking system has drawn ire. There is no doubt the site will be used in this way. So be it. It is better than nothing, and precious little is what we had. This is why The Australian even attempted to bring into the fray of the politics of education the notion of promoting good schools. It was agreed that it would be a celebratory exercise: underperforming schools we left well enough alone.
There may be reasons why all schools are not equal. But the fact is they are not. And not every one is appropriate for every child. Give parents the opportunity to make more informed decisions. If a primary school has a turnover of three year 1 teachers per class in one year, then I’d want to know, as a journalist and as a mother. I suspect many readers of this column would want to know too.
It is an interesting exercise to examine the notion of freedom of information for the users of our school system – a system that every Australian supports by way of taxes at the very least – against the right of educators and unionists to defend the possibility of an apparently unfair ranking system. The polarisation of views the My Schools project has revealed suggests the interests of the consumer and the educationadministrator will never completely overlap.
With state-based curriculums and differences in school starting ages, it can be argued a league table of school performance compares apples with oranges.
But the hunger for independent information on school performance is keen.
Comparisons are odious and always fraught. Without doubt the My Schools website will be refined as it becomes established, but it is a vital step towards ensuring transparency is key in our education system: that up-to-date, formal data on teaching, environment and educational outcomes is available to every parent.]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/parents-are-hungry-for-information-on-schools/story-e6frg6zo-1225824466914
It looks like the 52 day’s hunger strike up the tower didn’t do Peter much good!
[GRAZIER Peter Spencer has been served an eviction notice to vacate his southern NSW property little more than a fortnight after he ended a 52-day hunger strike.
“I’ve lost my farm,” he said.
The action is believed to have been taken by members of his family who are owed money by Mr Spencer.
“The sheriff’s been, they’ve served my notice, I’m being evicted next week,” he said.]
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/hunger-strike-pole-protester-peter-spencer-gets-eviction-notice/story-fn3dxity-1225824680687
PY went:
[BTW – I recognise your visit to the site is for the purpose of academic research, not purient interest.]
Oh no, I’m as prurient as the next bloke! 😛
[If such stigma does result from Myschool’s introduction, do you think that it might be gradually redressed by its operation (and Govt responses to its negative publicity) over some years, or do you think that it would continue unchanged?]
Probably will change over time as different aspects become important.
I think the press will eventually get bored with it except when they’re short on news and need to beat up on something to get some sales or online viewing.
[The point I was making is that this webiste will do next to nothing to improve education]
Maybe it can improve the spelling of those that would denigrate it?
Dingbat – #2510
[ The worst children i taught were defence kids, thoroughly ill-disciplined and their parents didn’t care a damn. ]
The worst kids at my primary school were the kids of Police.
Seems like a common theme emerging here.
Possum
I’m sure Julia, or her 2IC Ron, would be happy to send you the excel spreadsheet if you ask nicely.
[ I was weak in maths when I arrived there, but I sometimes wonder if I and others might have done differently with another teacher…
A good teacher in any subject makes a huge difference, but I think this is even more the case in Maths. ]
I had a really terrible Maths teacher in Matric and I was bone idle lazy. I knew I would do well in maths so I didn’t do any homework and faked all my results.
Unfortunately, half of the way into swatvac before the exams I worked out that I actually didn’t really know any Matric Maths 1 and 2. My unconscious worked it out for me at 3am and woke me with a panic attack to give me the message in no uncertain terms.
I still get that dream as a recurring nightmare when I’m going to have to do something I’m unprepared for.
[I’m sure Julia, or her 2IC Ron, would be happy to send you the excel spreadsheet if you ask nicely.]
Not in a million years would they do that Diogs, not in a million years.
It would be too easy to create the dreaded “League Tables”
[My point exactly. A lot of the hits on the website are out of purient interest.]
LOL, so you want the hits broken down by motivation for visiting the site? You’re hilarious.
Next you’ll be trying to convince us that the 9 million hits were just cats playing with their owners’ computers.
[But climate denialism is in effect economic war on our young people.]
I like that line from Bernard in crikey today – another piece on the Monckton visit and who is paying for it. Interesting that Abbott, Minchin and Joyce don’t want to meet with Monckton. They’ll just sit back and reap the oldies’ votes he delivers to them.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/01/29/age-shall-not-weary-them-this-is-the-face-of-climate-denialism/#comments
[It would be too easy to create the dreaded “League Tables”]
Yeah, It’s going to be a good seven days before someone does that and puts it on the intertubes.
Your research will no doubt be less populist and simplistic. 😀
#2520 – ShowsOn
I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. In response to an earlier post, someone suggested that Julia would provide all the information about the hits in Question Time next week (presumably she is going to be asked a dorothydixer on that). I called that as BS. I demonstrated it wasn’t possible.
Further, it seems to me that a very small proportion of the hits so far would be from parents making informed choices as to where to send their kids to school. The reason I suspect that is because school has started for 2010 – and parents have already made that choice for this term/year. Since a choice decision won’t arrive for another 10 weeks at least, I doubt whether choice making parents would be rushing to the website now.
Further, as i pointed out, choice is only something available to a limited number of people – that is the well-to-do.
BTW – I have stopped Kristina from typing on my keyboard. Every time I leave the room I move the chair away from the desk on which the computer sits. So far she doesn’t appear to have suffered any ill-effects from being deprived of the use of my computer.
More excuses…
[In response to an earlier post, someone suggested that Julia would provide all the information about the hits in Question Time next week (presumably she is going to be asked a dorothydixer on that). I called that as BS. I demonstrated it wasn’t possible.]
It would be quite easy to have the hits broken down into IP addresses. That way you can determine how many of the total hits are unique views, i.e. how many came from the same IP and how many came from different IPs. You could then determine from that the average number of page views per IP.
Peter Y – are you a youngie or oldie (retired or what)? working while you blog or at home? I’m not being rude, just asking so I can get my head around your questions a little better.
BH – #2526
Ever heard of holidays?
Dario, the MySchools website is an excuse to not do something serious about the education system.
Dingbat, more blather from you. Hardly surprising I guess.
[BTW – I have stopped Kristina from typing on my keyboard. Every time I leave the room I move the chair away from the desk on which the computer sits. So far she doesn’t appear to have suffered any ill-effects from being deprived of the use of my computer.]
Unfortunately, PY, when Kristina isn’t on you are and it is we who suffer the ill-effects.
[Ever heard of holidays?]
Wish I’d worked where you do PY. Nice long holiday for you.
#2525
[ It would be quite easy to have the hits broken down into IP addresses. That way you can determine how many of the total hits are unique views, i.e. how many came from the same IP and how many came from different IPs. You could then determine from that the average number of page views per IP.]
See my earlier post re this.
As I understand the technology:-
1. It can calculate the number of pages each discrete visitor views in a “visit”.
2. It can calculate the number of visitors from IP addresses. However, IP addresses for a computer are not static, and thus a return visitor may have 2 different IP addresses (thus resulting in the same visitor being counted as 2).
3. It cannot determine the reason for a visit (although this could have been achieved if to access the site you needed to be registered viewer. As part of the registration process it could have asked for the reason for the visit. Whilst self-reporting information may be incorrect – it would give some idea of the reasons for the visit).
My bottom line is that the alleged popularity of the site is a furphy, in the sense I strongly suspect it is not being greatly used by parents at the present time to make “informed choices”.
And more excuses…
#2531- BH
Don’t fret. I won’t be here much after March. Then you will feel much more relaxed and comfortable because your “spin” will go unchallenged.
Surprise surprise,
The couple arrested yesterday over the death of an Indian fruit picker (the badly burnt one) have been identified as Indian nationals by The Age.
This’ll pour some cold water on the Racist Australia twadle.
“An autopsy revealed that Mr Singh, 25, who had been bound and had his throat slashed, had been stabbed many times and was set alight while still alive”
Violence at this level is utterly appalling. Sounds like a hate crime to me
Mr Squiggle = #2535
[ Violence at this level is utterly appalling. Sounds like a hate crime to me ]
What do you suggest the hatred is of?
PY – I don’t know what the Hatred is of… but there are indications from The Age that
“Given the injuries that Mr Singh sustained and given the fact that he was set on fire [while] still alive … it’s probably at the upper end of the scale in terms of murders.”
[2. It can calculate the number of visitors from IP addresses. However, IP addresses for a computer are not static, and thus a return visitor may have 2 different IP addresses (thus resulting in the same visitor being counted as 2).]
This is ridiculous. The site has been running 2 days. It can take a month or more for an IP to refresh. My IP changes about once a month.
[My bottom line is that the alleged popularity of the site is a furphy, in the sense I strongly suspect it is not being greatly used by parents at the present time to make “informed choices”.]
Jesus, it has been running 1.5 days! You’re just stuck in the past, you think this information should be kept from the public. Thankfully we have a government that thinks otherwise.
Dario, feel free to address any of the actual points that I make, at any stage. And feel free to tell us exactly how this Govt is improving education in this country (not that it’s bad as the Tories make out by the way).
What have they done to improve the standard of teacher training? What have they done to improve the attraction of high quality people to the classroom? Because as you know, i’m sure, the best thing you can do for a child’s education is put them in a classroom with a great teacher.
ShowsOn:
[This is ridiculous. The site has been running 2 days. It can take a month or more for an IP to refresh. My IP changes about once a month.]
No. With most ADSL connections you’ll get a dynamically assigned IP address. Same for dial-up modems. This means that each time a new connection is made there is a high probability that you’ll receive a different address from the one you last had.
Now, it’s true that, for the most part, ADSL connections are quite stable and will only be re-established once a month or so (barring power outages, etc.) However, for some unfortunates they go up and down a few times a day.
The other thing being ignored is proxy servers. A lot of parents will do their viewing of the site from work. Not only will they be going through a proxy, but their individual computers will probably have private IP addresses anyway.
That said, web analytics software is pretty good at working it all out. It’s just necessary to bear in mind that the numbers which come out have margins of error which would cause pollsters to run screaming.
[Surprise surprise,
The couple arrested yesterday over the death of an Indian fruit picker (the badly burnt one) have been identified as Indian nationals by The Age.]
What you mean Indians are being bashed by other ethnics??!?
Gee, someone better inform Kevie Rudd’s nephew of this information quick smart before he dons his KKK uniform again.
Dio @ 3000
Have just read your response, for which thanks.
Mr Squiggle – #2537
Ok…so they probably hated the person…..or they were just pyschos on a kill thrill.
It is a very inhumane way to kill a person, but the history books are littered with similar inexplicable murders. I don’t recall anyone claiming the Griffith murder was a racial hatred motivated crime.
DB@2539:
[What have they done to improve the standard of teacher training? What have they done to improve the attraction of high quality people to the classroom? Because as you know, i’m sure, the best thing you can do for a child’s education is put them in a classroom with a great teacher.]
At the moment, teacher training is in the hands of state governments, though that can change, I guess.
The only way to attract high quality people to the classroom (in any numbers, there will always be top people who are willing to put up with poor conditions and pay) is to pay them more.
Some great teachers seem to be that way from day one. For most of us, me included, it is more of a craft, something you gain as a result of years of practice – though hard work and enthusiasm can make up for a lack of experience.
When I went through in Queensland in the early 60s, the training was abysmal. I’ve heard that it is not much better now.
In my opinion, by far the best training is experience in the classroom. Nothing else comes close.
For me, teaching was a way out of the working class and into the middle class. Many of my cohort were the same. There were other avenues, but we didn’t know about them.
Kids are much better informed about career opportunities now than my mob were. A kid who did as well, comparatively, as I did in high school in maths and science would be mad (or dedicated) to choose teaching. Business careers pay very much better, if you’ve got mathematical ability and the ability to communicate well, both orally and by the written word. With leadership as well, you’ve got it made.
Ratsars @ 2297
Couldn’t agree more that CC and population issues cannot be separated.
However, as you may have seen from some of the responses to my posts about population policy, discussions about population policy may cause visceral rather than rational reactions.
Having suggested, inter alia, increasing the Australian annual rate of refugee intake by a factor of four and having suggested that we should provide 5-10% of our GDP to foreign aid I was attacked for being a Ha?sonite and a rightwinger and several other things besides.
The one thing I did not get was a cogent explanation for how an extra 13 million people were going to make Australia more sustainable, how it was going to make it easier to reach any carbon targets, and and how our current unsustainability is going to be fixed.
vera
Posted Friday, January 29, 2010 at 12:14 pm | Permalink
“Ron Hello amigo
I see you have been copping it from the jealous, less worthy PBs
Isn’t it funny that the colour of jealousy is Green!
to me you’re the top
a song for you
You’re the top! You’re the Coliseum.
You’re the top! You’re the Louvre Museum.
You’re the melody from a symphony by Strauss.
You’re a Bendel bonnet,
A Shakespeare sonnet,
You’re Mickey Mouse!
You’re the Nile! You’re the Tow’r of Pisa.
You’re the smile on the Mona Lisa.
I’m a worthless check, a total wreck, a flop!
But if baby I’m the bottom, you’re the top! “
G’day Vera
from a Lady like thou , I do not know what to say as anything I say will get twisted
maybe I shall do a poem instead
as to GREENS posters , th lesser Adams
there in interst in spell words is greater than there interst in MySchools benefits
This shown by there pathetic libartarien negs against info actualy beeing able to be seen by parents
But MySchool info data is th weapon to drive “change” , this to subtle for them to realize
as to acadamic ADAM , obessed with spell , he LIKE othrs here who do NOT wanta a read my posts COULD chooose not to , they could just hit skippy button Is that so hard do I ask I ask
pity about Adam , wasted enegy , he is actualy a reel expert on politcal demographs electorates etc and when he does that he is worth reading , to learn , as I always do But there you go
There are caste-related murders in India all the time.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7616281.stm
Dingbat
[What have they done to improve the standard of teacher training? What have they done to improve the attraction of high quality people to the classroom? ]
Well, for starters, fair shake of the sauce bottle, it’s only been two years.
And in that time the government has worked with the States to set up the Smarter Schools program, focussing on funding for literacy & numeracy improvement, improving teacher quality, supporting disadvantaged schools, & related programs:
http://www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/Programs/SmarterSchools/Pages/default.aspx
On teaching specifically, this means:
* focussing on encouraging the best graduates to go into teaching;
* providing more resources for teacher training (and ongoing professional development);
* working to retain high quality teachers by providing recognition of their work
http://www.deewr.gov.au/Schooling/Programs/SmarterSchools/Pages/TeacherQuality.aspx
and
[The Rudd Government has already committed $550 million to improving quality teaching and school leadership; to attract, train, place, develop and retain quality teachers in our classrooms.
This is on top of the $626 million already being invested to boost the number of specialist maths and science teachers in our primary and secondary schools.]
[…the reform package includes measures such as Teach for Australia to recruit the nation’s most talented graduates into teaching.
Under the Education Revolution reforms, education authorities are encouraged to reward our highest performing classroom teachers and provide incentives for them to teach in our most challenging schools.]
http://www.deewr.gov.au/Ministers/Gillard/Media/Releases/Pages/Article_091027_074408.aspx
Psephos – #2547
According to that BBC article – The prosecution argued that the killings were caste-related, but the court rejected the allegation. .
It seems the murders were a dispute over land possession, although the article suggests that culturally, it is OK to kill the lowest caste. So my interpretation is the killings were motivated by greed. The caste system just made it that much psychologically easier for the perpetrators to satisfy their greed by resolving the dispute by permanently removing the disputants.
And which castes control the courts? Certainly not the Dalits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste-related_violence_in_India