Selective school students were asked if they were satisfied with life. Then they were scored

Hmmm... this is a tricky set of numbers. The first thing you need to know is that happiness levels (aka life-satisfaction) seem to be set at a level which changes little in response to life events -- sometimes amazingly so. To oversimplify a little, you are born sad or born happy and where you are on that continuum never changes much and soon reverts to type. So looking for long-term changes in it is perverse. See:

http://jonjayray.com/happines.html

But what is also true is that amid our general background feelings, we can all experience events which we really like or really dislike. So a much more interesting number would be how many of those events we experience. I think there is no doubt that people from advantagous backgrounds experience many more "like" events and fewer "dislike" events.

It's complicated but that's people

Sending a child to selective school makes little difference to their life satisfaction, employment and educational outcomes by the time they reach 25, a major study of Australian pupils has found.

The findings have triggered concerns about the academic segregation of students in selective schools and raised the prospect of rolling them back in a push to make the education system more inclusive and equitable.

The Victoria University study tracked 3000 students over 11 years at three stages, starting when they were 15. It included non-selective and selective school students across a mix of sectors.

Selective school graduates recorded a 0.19 point increase in general life satisfaction at age 25, a figure the report authors deemed insignificant.

“These very modest findings indicate that attending an academically selective school does not appear to pay off in large benefits for individuals,” the report said.

At age 19, 77.6 per cent of non-selective school-educated graduates were either employed or in education, compared to 81 per cent of selective school graduates– but that difference disappeared by age 25. Individuals used for comparison in the study were matched to peers who attended a different type of school but came from a similar social background.

Other research into UK selective grammar schools found employment and life benefits may emerge after age 25, with students who graduate from a selective school more likely to work in a job with higher occupational status, obtain higher level educational qualifications, earn higher incomes and own a home at age 42 compared to government school students.

The research did not measure the prestige of their subsequent university degree, other training or the quality of their employment.

NSW is the selective school capital of Australia, with 21 fully selective and 26 partially selective schools. By comparison, Victoria has four while Queensland and Western Australia have one. Previous research has found selective schools in NSW are dominated by children who come from the country’s most educationally advantaged homes.

The report’s findings prompted the researchers to call for further examination of selective schools in Australia.

“Rather than tweak some aspects of the enrolment processes, we see greater value in conducting a thorough and critical examination of fully and partially selective schools, and scaling back selectivity if the supposed benefits are not found,” it said.

Report author Melissa Tham said applications for selective schools were increasing every year.

“We need a full review of selective education, and we need a critical examination of whether these schools actually improve our students,” Tham said.

“Some could get into a selective school, and then they could go on to get a great ATAR and go on and become a doctor. But you just don’t know whether they would have been able to achieve that if they just went to a regular school.”

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/selective-school-students-were-asked-if-they-were-satisfied-with-life-then-they-were-scored-20240705-p5jrh0.html

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University of Sydney students and staff blast new ‘draconian’ protest crackdown

Academics and students at the University of Sydney have blasted the vice-chancellor for a “draconian” protest crackdown that requires explicit permission for megaphones to be used or posters to be put up on campus.

The policy, quietly introduced last week, demands three days’ notice for demonstrations to be held and approval for putting up “materials, banners or structures” on campus, using megaphones or amplifiers, erecting temporary structures and using cooking equipment.

It follows last month’s dissolution of the university’s pro-Palestine encampment, which was the longest running in Australia and faced sustained criticism from some Jewish groups and the Coalition.

In an email sent to staff on 4 July after the changes were implemented, the vice-chancellor, Mark Scott, said the encampment had “challenged” the university in many ways and ensuring campus was a safe environment was his “top priority”.

“At its core – this policy upholds our commitment to free speech – while recognising we need to be able to manage our environment for the safety and security of all,” he wrote.

“As we engage with each other during times of great challenge and polarity in broader society, it’s important we have the right settings in place.

“The university … will of course continue to support and give permission to activities that contribute to our campus life, including stalls run by USU clubs and societies.”

Open fires, camping, and demonstrations without notice were also banned, as was “any activity that presents an unacceptable health or safety risk” and indoor demonstrations.

Students and staff faced removal from campus or disciplinary action if they didn’t comply with the measures.

President of the university’s branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), Nick Riemer wrote to Scott on Saturday warning the branch committee would be meeting imminently to decide ways to respond until the policy was rescinded, adding preliminary advice suggested it may be illegal.

He told Guardian Australia the university was mirroring crackdown on speech that was associated with “authoritarian regimes”.

“Open and unobstructed protest is essential to any functional democratic community, particularly one which is oriented to the creation and promotion of knowledge,” the letter read. “The casualness with which you have just attempted to repress it is, frankly, extraordinary.

“I am giving you notice now that, in the name of the defence of elementary civil liberties, I refuse to be bound by the policy and will ignore it, regardless of the consequences. I know I am far from alone.”

A spokesperson for the University of Sydney told Guardian Australia the institution had a rich history of activism and protest but the campus was “not a camping ground”.

“All students and staff have the right to express themselves freely as long as it’s done safely and in accordance with our policies and the law,” they said.

“We uphold our students’ right to express their opinions in a respectful way and safe demonstrations are still very supported, but this policy makes it clear that our campus is not a camping ground.”

The spokesperson said the university “considered relevant legislation in the updating of this policy which still protects the legal right to protest. We consider the policy to be lawful and appropriate.”

A student at the University of Sydney and member of Students Against War, Jacob Starling, said Scott was “waging a war” on the democratic right to protest and would be challenged.

“This policy must be withdrawn immediately, and if it isn’t withdrawn it must be defied,” he said.

“Students and staff will not be silenced and we will continue to stand in solidarity with Palestine, no matter what draconian policy the university introduces.”

Student Representative Council (SRC) president at the University of Sydney, Harrison Brennan, said the policy was a direct response to the sustained campaign against the university’s ties to weapons manufacturers and Israeli academic institutions.

The university’s encampment was peacefully disbanded last month with some concessions agreed to by Scott. Multiple students were facing disciplinary action for participating in protests, including suspensions for interrupting classes.

Brennan said university campuses “must be places for students to exercise their democratic right to peaceful, lawful protest”.

“This is a repulsive full-scale offensive on the right to protest at the University of Sydney,” he said.

“Students shouldn’t need permission to protest on their own campus. Students shouldn’t need permission to use a megaphone or set up a stall, and students absolutely shouldn’t need permission to challenge their university’s connection to genocide.”

David Brophy, historian of China and Inner Asia at the University of Sydney, said the policy was adopted “without any notice or consultation”.

“[The] new policy … is an astonishing attack on political freedom at the university,” he posted on X.

Greens deputy leader and higher education spokesperson, senator Mehreen Faruqi, called on Scott to reverse the policy.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/08/university-of-sydney-students-and-staff-blast-new-draconian-protest-crackdown

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A Labor party minister who wants a radical cutback in spending

"Strange new respect" for Bill Shorten

An insurgent campaign by Bill Shorten to repair the National Disability Insurance Scheme has featured Pauline Hanson in a federal minister’s office and the second-ever reference to sex toys in the House of Representatives.

A two-month delay to new laws governing the NDIS stands to cost taxpayers at least $1 billion, with Shorten using his electoral experience to target the Coalition with methods more commonly deployed by an opposition trying to hammer a government.

And it’s a campaign gaining interest from fellow Labor ministers who see it as an alternative way to push back against Peter Dutton and the Greens while achieving their legislative aims.

As MPs and senators left Canberra airport on Thursday night, they caught sight of a truck emblazoned with “Save the NDIS: Put participants first, senators”. It also featured images of Greens leader Adam Bandt, one of his senators, Jordon Steele-John, and Liberal upper house members Linda Reynolds and Maria Kovacic.

The truck, which had driven laps around Parliament House in the morning, capped off Shorten’s week-long effort to get the Senate to consider and pass his bill to overhaul key parts of the NDIS.

The upper house’s community affairs committee earlier this year spent three months examining Shorten’s proposals, which aim to restrict expenditure within the NDIS in areas of questionable merit or for the automatic top-up of support packages.

But in June, thanks to Coalition and Greens senators, another inquiry into the same proposals by the same committee was set up and is not due to report until early next month.

On Monday, he received a formal confirmation note from NDIS actuary David Gifford, noting that by pushing back the new laws until at least August, the cost of the scheme would be $1.06 billion.

Shorten has used that $1 billion cost blowout to target both the Coalition and Greens with methods normally used by an opposition during an election campaign.

That included bringing Hanson, who once declared she did not trust Shorten, to do a joint press conference in his office to press the Senate to pass the NDIS reforms.

“Changes (are) needed to be done and it needs to be cleaned up. And that’s why I’m here talking today and I’m supporting Mr Shorten on this legislation that’s been put forward,” Hanson declared.

Bringing Hanson into the parliament’s ministerial wing was one thing. In the house, Shorten went even harder, explaining the type of services and goods his proposals would stop being funded under the NDIS.

“At the moment, we want to rule out the payment of strata fees; fines; steam rooms; gambling; legal cannabis; cruises; trips to Japan; non-assistance animals; taxidermy; weddings; gift cards; the Liberal favourite, sex toys; crystal therapy; cuddle therapy; clairvoyance and tarot (readings),” he told the parliament.

It was the second time since parliament sat in 1901 that sex toys have been referenced in the House of Representatives. Crystal therapy and taxidermy also debuted because of Shorten’s commentary.

He has also hit the phones of people outside the parliament who hold sway within the Liberal Party, to effectively embarrass their elected representatives into changing tack.

Shorten’s main message is about the cost of a program that threatens to overwhelm the budget.

The NDIS is expected to cost taxpayers $48 billion this financial year, the budget’s third-largest expense behind GST grants to the states and the age pension. Shorten’s measures are aimed at bringing down the annual increase in the cost of the scheme from around 14 per cent to 8 per cent.

If that rate of growth is not reduced, or savings are delayed, there is a substantial future hit to the budget.

The Parliamentary Budget Office has estimated if the cost of the NDIS grows at 9 per cent, rather than 8 per cent, the scheme will cost an extra $19 billion annually by 2034-35.

Shorten says if it continues to grow at 14 per cent, the cumulative total hit to the budget over the next decade will be around $250 billion.

He argues bringing the NDIS under control not only helps the budget, but is a form of micro-economic reform that will deliver benefits to taxpayers, recipients and the broader community.

If he is successful, it also means he has shown parts of the Cabinet that there are different ways to publicly push the government’s agenda.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/sex-toys-pauline-hanson-shorten-goes-rogue-with-insurgent-campaign-20240705-p5jrcz.html

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Wind droughts

Rafe Champion

Severe wind droughts are prolonged spells with next to no wind across continental areas. They also exist offshore as any sailor who has been becalmed knows full well. Wind droughts will kill the green-power fantasy, and they have the potential to deal a massive blow to our lifestyle, depending as we do on abundant, reliable and affordable power. While meteorologists don’t mention them, independent Australian observers discovered wind droughts over a decade ago but nobody took any notice. We may pay a bitter price for this neglect.

Serious questions have to be asked about the silence of meteorologists on wind droughts. At the same time the responsible authorities should be called to account for their failure to check the wind supply before connecting intermittent energy to the grid.

Why wind won’t work

Wind and solar cannot provide reliable power at grid-scale and the reason is as simple as ABC: Input to the grid must continuously match the demand, and the continuity of wind and solar input fails on nights with little or no wind.

The amount of storage required to bridge the gaps is not feasible or affordable.
Supporters of the transition to intermittent energy invoke a “holy trinity” of strategies to ride through wind drought. These are (1) long-distance transmission lines to shift power from areas of plenty to drought zones, (2) pumped hydro storage, and (3) battery storage.

Long distance transmission lines will not help because wind droughts can extend across the whole of SE Australia. On the other side of the world they have been known to extend across all of western Europe.

Pumped hydro at the scale required appears to be out of the question. There is no substantial pumped hydro scheme in the world that runs on wind and solar power alone.

As for batteries, we read practically every day that more “big batteries” are coming but “big” is an abuse of language in this context because the capacity of even the biggest batteries, like the 1.4GWh Waratah Super Battery in NSW, is negligible compared with the power required in a single night in the grid. That is in the order of 300GWh, while the total capacity of all the battery projects in the pipeline amount to some 60GWh and the batteries at work in the system at present can deliver only 3GWh.

The plan devised by the market operator (AEMO) calls for a ninefold increase in the amount of installed wind and solar capacity, but all that capacity will deliver a pitifully small amount of power on nights with little or no wind. Such nights are the limiting factor for the whole system like the slowest ship in a convoy or weakest link in a chain.

The threat of wind droughts

Subsidised and mandated intermittent energy providers drive out conventional power plants because they can make money when the market price is too low for conventional providers to run profitably. The unreliables can displace conventional power but they can’t replace it! Eventually there will not be enough reliable (dispatchable) power to meet 100 per cent of the demand. At that point, the power supply will be compromised whenever the wind is low overnight.

The day of reckoning has been delayed by the modest increase in demand in recent years due to creeping deindustrialization — directly caused by the increasing cost of power. As the coal generating capacity runs down, the pinch will first occur for a few hours at the dinnertime peak of demand. That can be met using the deceptively named Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader Scheme (RETS). This sounds like a reserve supply, but it functions by diverting power from major users (with compensation) to protect the integrity of the grid and avoid inconvenience for the community at large. In other words, industrial production stops so he the community’s lights stay on!

If the RETS diversions of supply is not enough, rolling blackouts can be organized to handle the shortfall. As the process goes on, there will eventually not be enough conventional power to service the base load, the minimum that is required day and night. At that point, whenever the wind is low overnight there will be blackouts, and we will officially achieve the status of a Third World country.

Since 2012, 12 coal power stations have closed in South-Eastern Australia, taking out some 8GW of capacity, which in total is down to 22GW. We are now only one coal station closure away from a power crisis whenever the wind is low overnight. The problem surfaced in June 2022 when outages in some coal stations created a crisis that was met by using gas, which spiked the price of gas, and hence the wholesale price of power.

This was seen as a problem with the price of gas, to be solved by government intervention and a price cap. It should have been seen as an early warning of what was coming if the capacity of coal power continued to run down. Gas is too expensive to be used outside peak periods. In addition, there are serious concerns about the availability of gas going forward.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2024/06/things-that-go-slump-in-the-night/

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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