Truth the best weapon
THE tragedy is that among the soldiers and judges and public servants being rounded up by Erdogan's Turkish henchmen will be journalists and writers, as the coup has proved to be a godsend for a crackdown on all those who are critical of the regime.
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For those who have tried to be a voice of reason in a Turkey that marches inexorably to becoming another fanatical Muslim state, I render this George Orwell quote: “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Maurice Corlett
Wagga
Changes miss the mark
I’M ALL in favour of overhauling the integrity of the HSC but I’m dubious about the idea of cobbling together Naplan results with HSC eligibility.
Firstly, it smacks of duplicity. We have always been told that individual student Naplan results are “confidential” and provide only a “snapshot” of whole-school performances.
I can’t see how that translates into the proposed use of individual Year 9 scores as a cut-off mark to decide who gets a HSC four years later!
The Australian government responses to the Senate Committee Report stated there was no support for “the development of league tables” which ranked schools, yet the current proposal creates an enormous league table which uses ranking to determine HSC eligibility for every student.
Both Naplan and the Myschool websites offer alerts about the margin of error inherent in individual results – quite large margins in limited tests. That’s why it’s specifically stated that the “key purpose of Naplan is to provide ... school improvement and target funding where it is most needed”, which is a far cry from ranking individual students for HSC purposes.
In simple terms, the results for an entire school might provide a relatively reliable “snapshot” of that school’s achievements and needs at the time of the test.
Statistically, the larger the school cohort sitting the test, the more reliable the "averaged" data will be; the smaller the school, the larger the margin of error.
Comparing individual student scores and plopping them onto a league table comes with the largest margin of error of all. So, by all means, tighten up the HSC but this ham-fisted proposal is not how to go about it effectively.
Robert Walker
Wagga
Dangers in diversity
AT THE Cheltenham Girls High School, you can no longer refer to females as girls or ladies, or even as women.
Under the so-called Safe Schools program, Arthur can now become Martha and Martha can become Arthur. There is no longer such a thing as a man or a woman. All this confusion just to appease the gays.
So soon, we could be addressing our PM as “Martha” Malcolm Turnbull and our beloved premier as “Mary” Mike Baird. You can become whatever gender that suits your fancy. This is true democracy.
Colin Field
Gundagai
Our stamp duty farce
MIGHT I comment in part to Patricia Murray’s letter to the editor recently on government obsession with budget surpluses.
Ms Murray states the NSW Government boasted a $3.4 billion surplus for the 2015-16 year.
Ms Murray may recall when the GST was introduced some 16 years ago, stamp duty was to be abolished, however greed took over. Stamp duty last year raised 28 per cent of our revenue, then multiply this by 16 years since the tax was to be abolished. Yes, Ms Murray, our government is running a business, albeit a hugely profitable illegal one.