MySchool - and now we examine Chatswood

This is the fourth in a quick series based on the MySchool website. If you've just arrived, scroll down a few posts and start at the beginning. This post is based on Chatswood, a wealthy area on Sydney's north shore. It has been so effectively colonised by successful Chinese immigrants from places like Hong Kong that a former staff member of mine (who was born and raised in HK) called it "Chatswoo", as in "it is full of people called Woo". The Chinese are notoriously pushy when it comes to education. Chatswood Public for instance has 83% of its students coming from LBOTE (Language Background Other Than English) - but it has the 2nd highest NAPLAN score out of all the schools in this sample. Just goes to show that a LBOTE background doesn't necessarily mean a lousy school performance.

The state school and Catholic ICSEA scores for 17 schools in the area are equal on 1189. By comparison, that's about 80 points higher than where I live (the higher the score, the wealthier the area).

The income quartiles paint a very nice picture of the area - there is almost no one in the Chatswood area in the lowest income quartile. The top quartile is packed for both state and Catholic schools.

The amount of funding that the schools get per head doesn't vary that dramatically in this area. Even the Independent school doesn't charge outrageous fees.

The ICSEA scores are also clustered together pretty closely - the scale on the left makes it appear that there is quite a difference, but as I've said before, in a wealthy area like this, the difference in scores is like comparing a family with a 5 series BMW to a 7 series BMW - and then comparing them to the people out in Fairfield in the 3rd hand Corolla.

There is a reasonable spread of NAPLAN results too, with the Catholics doing well up the top. However, all these scores are excellent. Looking at this table is like looking at the Gold, Silver and Bronze winners at the Olympics - the person that took away bronze is still an awesome athlete.

The above graph shows the total NAPLAN scores for Grade 3 compared to school funding per head. Again, this is pretty arbitrary for this area - those scores are all very good, and compared to a poor area like Fairfield, the amount of funding per head is low. In other words, all these schools provide good results at a reasonable cost.

This is where things get funky - this graph shows the results from three areas - a low income area and two high income areas. For this graph, I've increased the size of the markers for the Chatswood schools. What sticks out to start with is that all the Chatswood area schools on the top side of the NAPLAN scores. All of them. Same goes for the Five Dock schools - every one of them is on the top side of the line. With Fairfield, every state school is below that line - only the Catholic schools from that area are performing on par with the state schools and Catholic schools from the richer areas.

The second thing that struck me is that in terms of value for money (or scores for bucks), almost all the Catholic and state schools in the Chatswood area are good value. Most are in the top left hand quadrant - the "stars" quadrant. The four that don't make it are reasonably close to the line.

Here's the big challenge for policy makers - the problem schools are those below the line. In other words, in our sample, every single school in the poor area. They're either low cost and poor performance or high cost and poor performance. How do you improve their performance?

There are those that repeat endlessly that the problem is a lack of resources - that state schools need more resources. Well, I think I have just shown that not all state schools need more resources - those in rich areas are doing fantastically, and they're doing it with the same or less money than the state schools in poor areas.

Let's take the schools in the "sink" quadrant - low cost, low performance. Let's assume we throw more money at them - they can move in two directions. The preferred direction is to move towards "A", which is into the more expensive, but high performance quadrant. The worst possible result is for their results to flatline, but their costs to increase dramatically (option "B"). It would be interesting to look at the finances and results of these schools over time. For instance, were those schools in the bottom right hand quadrant in the bottom left hand quadrant a few years ago? Have they been showered with money, but done nothing useful with it? (Makes you wonder what impact all that BER spending is going to have).

What gets me about the above graph is that we are more likely to follow option "B" rather than option "A". Option A is not about throwing more money at the problem - it is about qualitative improvements in the school. It is about turning around the culture of these schools - something that's probably dreadfully difficult. It really is so much easier to just take more money from the taxpayer and talk loudly about throwing it their way, rather than doing the hard yards of micro reform.

The best possible result of course is to wind back the spending on the expensive under-performers whilst improving their results. Now that would certainly be a challenge - but this is the sort of thing that happens in business on a regular basis. Because if not, the business goes bankrupt. If you're a business and you're in that corner, basically you're fucked. It's time to turn around or liquidate.

Another option is to just accept that perhaps there isn't much that the schools can do for these kids, regardless of how much money we throw at them. What counts more highly is the background and culture of their families, and how much support and encouragement they give their kids. In that case, we do two things - we stop dreaming that all kids can be super stars, and we do our damnedest to identify the smart and capable kids in those areas and we yank them out as early as possible and send them to a good school in a good area, where they are surrounded by kids that support academic achievement. Or we give them a top-up voucher to send them to the local Catholic school if they are too poor to afford the extra fees.

Vegemite consumption

Back on January 5, I posted in regard to the purchase of a fresh 400gm jar of Vegemite. I wondered at the time how long it would last - I figured it would last about 2 months.

Well, here we are 2 months later, and there is about one sandwich's worth of Vegemite left in that jar. Just to horrify my American readers, that means we are on track to consume 5 pounds of the black muck this year.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

More on MySchool, school income and NAPLAN

Everything in this post relates to primary schools only. I put up two more posts on this subject yesterday - read them first if you are new to this.

The work in this post was suggested by 1735099, who actually teaches, so I hope this adds some value.

What I did yesterday was to crunch the numbers on two different areas - a high wealth area and a low wealth area (Five Dock vs Fairfield). One is full of old migrants who have done well for themselves, and the other is full of new migrants who are struggling to get off the ground.

The idea of this post is to see whether there is a connection between the amount of money that a school gets and the NAPLAN scores the kids get.

In order to do that, I invented the BOAB Naplan index - essentially I took all five of the NAPLAN results for grade 3 and added them up. It's not an average - it's a total. I am the first to admit that it is not terribly scientific, but it's the best that I can be bothered coming up with on a Sunday afternoon.

Here's the results from the high wealth area - it's a bit of a mixed bag. The best NAPLAN scores in our area are delivered by two state schools. I tried adding a trend line - forget it. By the way - the red markers are state schools, and the blue ones are Catholic schools.

I then did the same for the low wealth area. Out west, the Catholic schools perform better (or since this is looking at Grade 3 results, they attract a better class of student). The Catholic schools also deliver a good result at lower cost. The green marker is an Independent school.

Now we apply the good old BCG matrix idea to the graphs. This is all arbitrary by the way - I adjusted the minimum points on both axis, and then drew four quadrants over the data. It's quick and dirty, but it provides an interesting way to think about how schools are performing. As taxpayers (and school fee payers), we want to get the most bang for our buck. We get that in the top left hand corner - schools up there are stars. They get good results at low cost. Schools in the bottom right hand corner are dogs - expensive, low performers. I'm going to call those in the top right corner the "prestige" schools, as they provide good results at higher cost. I'll let you lot think of a name for the bottom left corner - low cost, low results.

Where this gets interesting is when we apply it to the low wealth area. We suddenly find that the Catholics do well in the "star" category - low cost, good results. The state schools do well at getting reasonable results, but at higher cost.

The fun really begins when you compare both types of schools across both areas. Sorry if the graphs get a bit hard to read from this point. In the above graph, the red pointy hats at state schools in low wealth areas. The black hats are Catholic schools in low wealth areas. The red rhomboids are state schools in high wealth areas, and the blue rhomboids are Catholic schools in high wealth areas.

Here, maybe a few lines on the graph will help. What do you see?

Here's what I see. Look at the two state schools above that I've circled. The red triangle is the top performing state school in the low wealth area. The red rhomboid above it is the lowest performing state in the high wealth area. When it comes to state schools, the split is blindingly obvious - if you live in a good area, you get good NAPLAN results, regardless of school income per head.

However, the Catholic schools do well across both areas. Amazingly, the top NAPLAN scores come from two Catholic schools in the poor area.

Also, when you compare across both areas, the relatively expensive state schools in the high wealth area (expensive compared to the local Catholic schools) suddenly look like absolute bargains compared to the amount of money being poured in to state schools in the poor areas.

Here's those two top performing Catholic schools.

All this has to be taken with a pinch of salt, as we are looking at one made up NAPLAN index across two areas, and only for grade 3.

That said, I think it conforms a lot of folk wisdom.

In poor areas, the Catholic schools are attracting the "better" kids (for want of a better term).

In a well off area, it probably doesn't matter what type of school you go to.

My question is this - we're pouring money into state schools in poor areas. Are we getting results commensurate with the effort? I know that for many people, their first reaction will be, "We should put more money into this area". But is that the right reaction? Can you make a silk purse out of a sow's ear?

MySchool stats - Fairfield and Cabrammata

In my last post, I looked at a relatively wealthy enclave in Sydney, and how the local primary state and Catholic schools compared. I've now run the numbers on 17 primary schools in the Fairfield-Cabramatta area. This is a region in Western Sydney with lots and lots of migrants and it's got pockets of nasty.

First cab off the rank - there is a special school in the area. I didn't look into it too closely, but it gets funding of $82,908 per head.

The breakdown of the 17 schools is as follows - one special, one Independent, 4 Catholic and 11 State. The average ICSEA score for the area is 946. Over my way, it's 1117 - a significant difference in average family incomes.

Over my way, the State schools have higher ICSEA scores than the Catholic schools. It's very much the reverse in Fairfield - the average state school score is 924, compared to 990 for the Catholics.

As far as speaking English (or not speaking English) is concerned, the average of the two systems is almost exactly the same - around 92%. Note that the Independent school is nearly 100% - it's an Assyrian school.

Then we have income per head - the Catholics are clearly lagging here. The Catholics get an average of $8,134 per head compared to $9,415 for the state schools (and I took the special school out to stop it skewing the numbers). That's about 16% more per head for the state schools.

I've redrawn the income per head graph to show the income of each school in this area as a multiple of the school with the lowest income. Interesting to note how much more some of the state schools are getting than their Catholic brethren. The state school in the area with the highest income per head gets 50% more than the poorest Catholic school - a massive gulf.

This graph shows the income quartiles. This is almost the opposite of our area - out this way, 40-60% of families are in the top quartile, and only 8-10% are in the bottom one. In Fairfield, most families are in the bottom quartiles. The state schools clearly have a bigger share of the bottom quartile, but the Catholic share is still very significant.

So in a high income area, the difference in funding between Catholic and state schools is negligible - a few hundred bucks per student. However, in low income areas, the state schools streak ahead by 15% - even though they are drawing students in general from the same LBOTE and bottom quartile populations.

One last graph, and then I'm calling it a night. The graph above shows income per student for state schools, with the low income Fairfield area in red, and the high income area in blue. What I would have expected is that the DET would be pouring lots of money into schools in low income areas, and less money into high income areas. That's largely true - but there are some outliers. For instance, the state school with the lowest average income per student is also in the poor area. The state school with the fifth highest income per student is in the rich area. How does that work out?

Some MySchool stats

A predictable row has broken out over the release of financial information via the MySchool website. Everyone is grabbing numbers to support their particular point of view.

I have just spent an hour pulling down and comparing the stats for 17 schools in our area. I chose schools that are all within easy reach of our house - I don't exactly feel like shipping my kids to a school two hours away in Sydney traffic (then again, a 2km trip around here can take an hour sometimes). All these schools are in the Five Dock-Abbotsford-Concord-Drummoyne area.

The schools were 11 primary, 5 secondary and one special school for disabled kids.

10 were state schools, 6 Catholic and one Independent.

Overall, this is a reasonably wealthy area. The average ICSEA score is 1117 (the average for the whole country is 1000) - this is a statistical measure of the wealth of the residents. The percentage of Aboriginal kids across all schools is 0.7%. The average LBOTE (Language Background Other Than English) is 57%.

Those numbers are not terribly surprising - this area could be characterised mainly as "wogs done good". That is, it is full of Italian and Greek immigrants and their kids who have succeeded in business. At 10am on a weekday, the cafes are full of bling covered wog mums who have arrived in their Mercedes or BMW.

Digging into the numbers provides some surprises though.

The above chart is income per head for all schools - the Independent high school really sticks out (green bar). The state schools are in red - you can see there is an even mix of state and Catholic, with the Catholics in last place. I'll strip out the high schools to show just the primary schools.

The state primary schools do slightly better than the Catholic primary schools in terms of income - the state schools get $8878 per head and the Micks get $8682. A fairly trivial difference.

We always hear that state schools need more resources because they deal with kids from poorer backgrounds and migrant kids etc who don't speak English at home. Does that hold up here?

For state primary schools, the average ICSEA score is 1143 - for Catholics it's 1108. That means the parents with kids at Catholic schools are in fact slightly poorer than those at state schools. What you can see in the above graph is that of the top 10 ICSEA scores in our area, one goes to an independent school, 7 to state schools and 2 to Catholic schools. The Catholic schools are clustered in the low to mid range of ICSEA (wealth) scores.

The average LBOTE for state primary schools is 54% - for Catholics, it's a whopping 71% in primary school. Looking at the graph above, you can see that the Catholic schools get a preponderance of the LBOTE kids.

Then there are the income quartiles.

The state primary schools draw 59% of their kids from families in the top income quartile - that drops to 43% for Catholics. The difference is huge. In the bottom two quartiles, 8% of state school kids come from the bottom quartile and 10% from the second bottom. For Catholics, 11% come from the bottom quartile and 14% from the second bottom.

So in our area, the kids at state schools have all the advantages. They get more money in total to spend each year (just), fewer of the kids come from LBOTE backgrounds and the bulk of their parents are in the top income quartile - and fewer are in the lowest quartiles.

The only big difference is that state schools have a whopping 1% Aboriginal student population vs 0.17% for Catholic schools.

As for the state school for disabled kids, it gets $64,073 per kid. I've seen the kids that go there - they are severely disabled, and they need every cent of that.

Things change a bit in high school.

The state school kids still come from richer backgrounds (ICSEA of 1097 vs 1042). With the income quartiles, the difference is even bigger - the Catholic high school kids draw more of their kids from the lower quartiles.

How is the income that a school receives affected by the ICSEA score? We'd expect the amount of money that a school gets to decline as the ICSEA score increases, and in our area, it does - the trend line slopes down slightly from left to right, indicating less money for richer areas. You can see from the above graph though that the state schools cluster over on the richer side and the Catholic schools are all on the slightly lower income side. This is a bit of a muchness around here - the entire area is wealthier than most of Australia, so comparing "rich and poor" is like comparing the owner of a 5 series BMW with the owner of a 7 series BMW.

I'm not saying that this area is typical by any means. What I am saying is that if you want to compare numbers, you're better off doing it by comparing like with like. There's no use comparing a state school in this area with a Catholic school in Liverpool or Mt Druitt.

Hmm, maybe that's what I'll do next - look at all the schools in say the Fairfield area.

What these stats do show however is that the state schools around here are serving a wealthier clientele than the Catholic schools, and they get slightly more money to do that. They also have to deal with a smaller number of LBOTE kids, and families from the lower income quartiles. Are the results any different? That will have to wait for another weekend when I have a few hours free.

But on the whole, how very interesting..........

Saturday photos

Saturday photos? What's this Saturday photos business? Isn't Saturday normally a day for resting the legs?

Yes, it is - but I had a mission to perform (see next post), so I zipped out for a while looking for election posters. As I had to visit Balmain, I took my first trip over the new bike/pedestrian lane on the new Iron Cove Bridge. Bloody hell, it's good - it's wide and smooth. It makes a lovely change from the usual narrow, twisting rooted bits of "bike path" that are currently being constructed around Sydney. Although not shown in the photo, it had plenty of pedestrians on it. Wasn't nice weather, but there were heaps of people walking around.

I stuck my head over the side of the bridge and saw rowers - lots of rowers. Big regatta on today.

Believe me when I say there are 36 rowing shells in the above photo - I counted them from the bridge. They stretch out into the distance for a kilometre or so.

Lots and lots of expensive shells parked at Rodd Point too, waiting to go out.

A non-rowing aquatic feature - the swimming pool next to the Iron Cove Bridge. One thing Sydney does well is swimming pools right on the water.

More election posters

As requested by the Tizona Group, I bring you four more election posters. I did a special ride today, just for you guys. First off, we have the current Mayor of Canada Bay, Angelo Tsirekas. He has a few different posters, all similar to the one above. I think this is actually his old mayoral campaign poster, with a "Drummoyne" sticker stuck over his old mayoral election slogan. Labor have written this seat off, so he's having to make do with a budget of sweet FA.

God knows why he went with yellow - I always associate that colour with cowardice. One thing I have noticed though - he doesn't try to chat my partner up when I accompany her to functions he's attending. Rumour has it that he got a bit too friendly with ladies other than his wife last year, and was booted out of the marital abode. It appears things have since been patched up. He's got excellent name recognition though, having been mayor for years, so I think he is in with a reasonable chance. The Labor voters that were walking around six months ago saying that they'd never vote for D'Amore (since hauled up before ICAC on corruption charges and suspended from the Labor party) will vote for Tsirekas. His name doesn't stink like D'Amore's did (she is also Joe Tripodi's sister-in-law). As a newbie, he also isn't associated with the wretched Labor government.

Jamie Parker, who is the Mayor of Leichhardt. He's hoping to knock off Verity Firth in Balmain. Although he's a Green, he's been spotted parking his big black Mercedes some distance from functions and then walking so that people don't get the idea that he is in fact a rich, capitalist plutocrat. He's certainly richer than the other candidates shown here. I hope that all that blue sky in the background isn't full of CO2.

Alex Elliot - never heard of him, and don't ask me why he went with black and white. Cost perhaps? It stands out though.

John Sidoti, currently Mayor of Burwood and the Liberal candidate (sorry about the distant photo - the road was too busy to cross - will try to get a better photo). It's always fun around here when the elections are Greeks vs Italians. Sidoti has added a large format poster to his repertoire - the ones on the right of the trailer. They really stand out. Interesting how the Liberal is photographed on a green background, and the Green on a blue background (traditionally the conservative colour).

More to follow after the next ride. I didn't spot a poster for the Liberal candidate for Balmain this morning - I know they are out there, but there weren't any in the spots that I rode around today.

Friday photos

Seen in Martin Place at lunch today - he was doing this with pencil, not chalk. He got my $2 coin, whilst the beggar standing behind me got nada.

Furious overtaking manoeuvres on the bridge this morning. Medium speed people overtaking slow people, with faster bikes ripping past everyone.

One of the fast buggers. One thing I've noticed about the really skinny blokes is that their shoulders are narrower than their handlebars. Mine are way, way broader than mine - I have to push about double the frontage through the air as these blokes.

Thursday photos

Not the typical method for taking kids to daycare in Sydney. You have to hand it to guys that can motor up the Anzac Bridge on a bike like this with a kid on the back.

Ahhhhh, a Ninja! Ok, the sun was well and truly up this morning when I left (absolutely knackered, needed a bit more sleep), but I don't get why some people like to disguise themselves and hide from motorists by dressing in black from head to foot.

Keep Verity Out

The Tizona Group are on the hunt for Labor party election posters that don't look like Labor party election posters. This one from Verity Firth is a classic. Her husband was busted recently buying a single eckie tablet, and he resigned (idiot). Some smart arse has been running around the neighbourhood adding a sticker that simply says "out", as in "keep verity out". That meets with my approval.

Wednesday photos

Cav has asked me to put my photo caption underneath the photos, rather than above them. Christ on a bike, the world is full of critics. I'll give it a go - just this once. I know that the traditional book style format is to put them underneath - that's what I grew up with too. Ugh - this is going to be a wrenching change. Bloody hell Cav, why can't you old farts get with the program and move into the 20th Century!

This is a caption below the photo. Bloody hell - now I know why I type my narrative above the photo - the blogger composing layout is completely crap for typing below a photo. I knew there was a sensible reason why a wise man like myself would put captions above photos. Since I've been typing, the photo above has scrolled out of the composing window, so I have no idea any more what's in the photo. You'll have to tell me. I think it is two penguins having sex in Antarctica.

Here's another photo - blast, it's scrolled away too as I've typed. I think it's a photo of my hairy knee, complete with rooftop construction induced scar. No, I scrolled up and found that it is actually a big collection of rowers getting setup for a race. They're hard to spot in the early morning light, but there was over a dozen shells out there when I went past.

How's that for a montage of early morning Bay activity? All the above photo needs is a jogger tripping over an errant dog, and it will be complete.

The early morning light is great for these action shots - the shutter needs to stay open longer, which produces a great bit of blurring.

This bloke had the most incredible calf definition. Only thing I will point out is that my legs are even hairier than his. When I was at uni, some mates held me down one night and tried to shave my leg. They removed a section of hair about an inch and half long, and then gave up as the razor was irretrievably clogged. I could have been a stunt double on Planet of the Apes.

Impact of carbon tax on electricity prices

Andrew Bolt has put up a table showing the CO2 emissions of our largest companies, as well as how much carbon tax they'd have to pay.

Top of the list is Macquarie Generation, a state owned generator in the Hunter Valley with a couple of coal fired plants. According to Bolt, with a tax of $26 a tonne, Macquarie will have to pay $613 million in carbon taxes.

In 2010, Macquarie had total revenue of $1,157 million. Take away expenses and taxes etc, and profit ended up being $196 million.

I have seen some rather deranged comments by leftoids saying that it would be eeeeevil if companies put their prices up and "gouged" consumers.

Hmm. They make a profit of $196 million, but then get slugged with an extra $613 million in costs - and it's eeeevil of them to put their prices up?

I think not.

Still, what we do now is that in order for Macquarie to continue making a reasonable profit (it has to make a profit as it owes $800 million, and that has to be paid back out of profits), it's going to have to increase its revenue by just over 50%. Which of course will feed straight into our power bills.

Now you can argue that the purpose of the carbon tax is to force a company like Macquarie to give up coal and go renewable. However, that ignores the fact that they'll have to write off $3.4 billion worth of power stations, whilst paying off $800 million of debt. That hit of course will have to be taken by the NSW taxpayer, either through higher taxes or higher power bills. Either way, we're fucked.