The truth about NCEA

Dale Carnegie, the head of Engineering at Victoria University, writes in the NZ Herald about the consequences of NCEA. I don't want to politicise this particularly but I was dead against NCEA. In 2002  NCEA opposition was one of ACT's main policy planks. I recall putting up the large billboards around the Hutt South. My main concern was that it would dumb down or de-motivate bright kids. That the grading was just too broad. My child is currently practising for Level One next year. She comes home with grade and  remark, "Excellence, but if you'd done so and so you'd get a stronger excellence."  But there is no 'stronger excellence'. So why bother to go the extra mile.

Anyway, here's Mr Carnegie's thoughts on the matter:

NCEA has been successful in many areas, especially keeping students in school longer. However it is very clear from our research that for very many students NCEA is not effectively preparing them for engineering study at university.
Our research over a large number of first-year engineering students reveals a systemic problem with the concept of the "achieved" NCEA grade. This grade spans a huge range - it can include excellence-level students who have made some minor errors, through to students who really have not gained competence in the material. Many potentially capable students report that they just "cruised through NCEA" knowing they would be able to obtain the achieved grade with minimal work. A failed assessment is "no big deal"as often they get to re-sit that assessment. When they take that work ethic and expectation into University study, they are in trouble. The result is that there is significant variability in "achieved-level" students' study habits, work ethic and subsequently, actual subject knowledge.
Compounding this issue, we are aware of secondary schools that actively discourage students who have only gained an achieved grade in mathematics at NCEA Level 2 from enrolling in that subject at Level 3. This seems to be due to a concern that those students might fail, with a consequential adverse effect on that school's league table standings. This removes many potential students from even being able to consider enrolment in engineering.
At the core of the problem is the lack of a real, meaningful grade. I advocate for a return to real percentage scores - these motivate students to improve themselves, to gain the best score they can. It would end the farce of excellent students receiving an achieved grade due to one or two minor mistakes. It would give the universities a real understanding of student ability.

ACT's opportunity

Casting around for something meaningful to say about John Banks and the prospects of ACT in the future, I came across this on Scoop:

ACT on Campus thanks John Banks, looks to future

Wednesday, 4 December 2013, 8:43 pm
Press Release: ACT On Campus ACT on Campus thanks John Banks, looks to future

ACT on Campus President Taylor Warwood today thanked John Banks for his contribution to ACT in the past two years.
"John Banks has worked tirelessly in and out of parliament to achieve valuable goals. He has successfully overseen the introduction of Partnership Schools legislation, and has a voting record we in ACT on Campus can be proud of," said Mr Warwood.
"In particular, we thank him for his support of marriage equality, keeping the drinking age 18, and opposing the testing of party pills on animals.
"John is a politician of true integrity who cares about New Zealand. It will be sad to see him go.
"However, ACT is more than just John Banks. The party now has an exciting opportunity to rejuvenate itself, and we will welcome attention being refocused onto ACT's many potential candidates.
"ACT on Campus will play an active role in the selection of candidates and we welcome other young liberal kiwis to join us in this process."

Whoever wrote that, take a bow. It's honest, it identifies concretes instead of employing woolly platitudes and most importantly, reaffirms ACT's liberal credentials.

With the advent of the Conservative Party, ACT no longer needs to cast its net in that direction.

I really do see Bank's retirement as an opportunity, but like ACT on Campus, would  like to sincerely thank him for his animal welfare advocacy.

Education rating incongruities

Only recently the Legatum Institute rated NZ Number 1 in the world in education rankings.

They base their analysis on things like teacher/pupil ratio, enrolment and perceptions about the education system. Matters that governments can control. They do not appear to rate by individual achievement or performance.

The OECD measures the actual performance of students by testing 4,000 and delivers a different result. NZ is slipping in Maths, English and Science. Although the rankings could fairly be described as "plummeting" the absolute scores haven't dropped radically.

I heard one commentator talking about the worsening results being down to the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer." But the one trend that is 'up' is achievement by immigrant students. If immigrant students generally fall into lower income groups (I am making that assumption but could be wrong) then that doesn't stack up.

Another incongruity arises too. The OECD report apparently finds the gap between achievers and non-achievers is larger than any other country. Maori have traditionally featured disproportionately among the non-achievers.

Yet yesterday Census 2013 results found,

Over 36,000 Māori stated a bachelor’s degree or higher as their highest qualification at the 2013 Census – a more than 50 percent increase since 2006.

It's difficult to square all of this up.

Welfare checks de ja vu

MSD are apparently going to begin "home visits" to sole parent support beneficiaries to check whether they are indeed single.

But they intend conducting them 14 weeks after application. So only new applicants are scrutinised? 14 months or 14 years after any application would probably reveal more fraud.

In any case even if they find the beneficiary is living with a partner there are a number of ways she can challenge having her benefit stopped. Just read up on the Ruka Ruling in the MSD manual.

I don't particularly like this state snooping stuff (but can accept the legitimacy of it). It's been done before in 1980 under George Gair, a National Minister and sparked outrage then, with an Evening Post headline, BENEFIT CHECKERS DENY 'GESTAPO' TAG.

Here's the thing. If the benefit was strictly time-limited, if everybody had clear expectations that the degree and amount of assistance was tightly controlled and not open-ended (it effectively remains so despite the reforms) then the need to police welfare in this manner would disappear.

And Sue Moroney makes an utterly redundant comment:

But Labour social development spokeswoman Sue Moroney said the visits would be "complete overkill", levelling suspicion at people who had done nothing wrong. "If only they would put their money into putting people into paid employment, rather than bringing in the thought police," she said.

The "thought police"? What has freedom of speech and expression got to do with people defrauding the taxpayer? MSD aren't checking if beneficiaries are thinking about fraud; they are checking whether they are committig it.

Update: More de ja vu regarding "home visits". I was just reflecting on the following which I wrote some years ago:


The Ministry of Social Development’s procedural policy requires staff home visits to beneficiaries be in pairs due to security concerns.  During 2001/02 however, an experimental project involved unaccompanied home visits to discourage the pursuit of a benefit application.  On this occasion, staff members were trained to use cell phones for security, not make home visits out of cell phone range and to leave the property at the first sign of danger.  Some case managers declined to participate.
Source: 

Evaluation of Avenues: A Pilot of a Modified Domestic Purposes Benefit-Sole parent Application Process, Ministry of Social Development, June 2003

Who is Labour targetting?

This piece of personally addressed  electioneering material arrived in my letterbox today. Mrs Lindsay Mitchell was the only voter in this household to receive one. Makes me wonder about a number of things.

1/ Why does the text begin, "Most New Zealanders don't want assets like power companies sold off..." when they are asking me to vote in a referendum designed specifically to find out if Most New Zealanders don't want assets like power companies sold off... 

2/ Why did they put up the postshop/kiwibank locator web address to help me "find a post office or box near you"? What moron doesn't know where the nearest post box is? Or is this just subliminal messaging about kiwibank and its connection to Labour?

3/ Why has Labour left it until after many people will have already received and returned their voting papers to embark on this exercise?

4/ Why was I selected from the electoral roll?

5/ Was it purely random or do they have a target group?

6/ The message doubles as a recruitment drive for Labour so again, how are they profiling targets?

7/ Does Labour think older married women will be particularly receptive to their advances (oh look the little wife got  mail in her own right?) and have they given up commuicating to men?

8/ Have I simply found my way onto one of their databases because I am politically active?

Too late Labour. Voted 'yes' over a week ago.

Dealing with propaganda

The Child Poverty Action Group recently re-released this scatter plot (amended at the y axis after I pointed out their ealier calculation error) depicting the percentage of child abuse in each CYF site office against the rate of benefit dependency in each site office area.

Along the x axis they plotted, "% income-tested beneficiaries in the total estimated population". I argued with them that they should have used income-tested beneficiaries with dependent children if attempting to assess any association between child abuse and benefit dependency. Including everyone on an unemployment, sickness and invalid benefit would skew the result in my view.

To make my point I requested the relevant data from MSD.

Here's the result.

Below, in the first graph, I have used the CPAG data (available at their appendices) and recreated their scatter plot (the pattern is naturally identical to the one above).

In the second graph I have used the same CPAG data for child abuse (Y axis) but entered the new income-tested beneficiary with dependent children as a percentage of the 18-64 year-old population data (X axis).

As expected the correlation has strengthened markedly.

CPAG has tried very hard to downplay the association between child abuse and benefit dependency going so far as to state in the same report, "The data suggests there is no correlation between benefit receipt and child maltreatment." (p2)

Make your own mind up.

But also ask yourself why they would do this.

CPAG believes that children are poor because benefit payment rates are too low. They cannot accept there is anything inherently problematic with being on a benefit long-term barring children don't receive enough income from the state. If the public starts to believe that benefit dependency is a significant risk for children then CPAG is in trouble. And so are the electoral chances of the Greens and Labour, both promoting higher benefits.

NewstalkZB tomorrow

On NewstalkZB tomorrow after the 10am news with Justin du Fresne talking about welfare, social issues and the stuff I generally blog about.

Another good graphic from Statistics NZ

Another good graphic from Stats NZ showing how much we are spending on certain commodities when comparing 1974 with 2013:

Click here for enlarged view

Quote of the day

This moved me, particularly the second sentence.

The State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

-- Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” [1849]

Hat tip FFF

And as I check the link another excellent read appears:

Defenders of the welfare state argue that its purpose is implied in its name: providing for the welfare of its citizens. That is done by the judicious transfer of resources to ensure that even citizens on the lowest rung of the socio-economic ladder have access to the material resources necessary to lead minimally decent lives. The problem is, once you look at actual political outcomes a little more closely, they do not resemble the intentions of the welfare state’s defenders.

 In the United States, very little wealth is transferred from those fortunate enough to live in abundance to those unfortunate enough to have little. For example, some of the chief recipients of transfer payments in the United States are the elderly — those who are most likely to have amassed significant wealth and comfort over the course of their working careers; and the source of the transfer payments is largely the young — those who are just starting out on their careers and have little income or wealth to their names.

I'd take issue with that specific example but the point he makes is otherwise valid. There is a great deal of 'churn' from the haves to the have-nots whose degree of economic separation isn't great. Which only serves to create power and control for bureaucrats.

Tracking the life-cycle of the welfare state

Thanks to Steve Wrathall on Whale Oil who drew my attention to this illustration:

If you think this is only a contemporary observation, past welfare states (eg legislated parish-collected compulsory tithing) exhibit the same life cycle.

"Beyond Beveridge"

New work from Peter Saunders who provided advice to the Welfare Working Group:

A new Civitas book proposes a sweeping overhaul of the benefits system which would see National Insurance abolished and replaced with a system of personal welfare accounts that would put the contributory principle back at the heart of social security. The accounts could be used for saving, insurance and even loans - helping people spread the costs of unemployment, parental leave, higher education and old age across their lifetime.

Of course people would be compelled to contribute to these accounts which finds disfavour with libertarians.

My position has always been I'd rather be compelled to provide for myself than compelled to provide for someone else.

Beyond Beveridge can be found here. No, I haven't read it yet. And at 179 pages I probably won't.

But here's the plan for people interested in how we get there from here (given NZ's social security set up is similar). It sounds Roger Douglasish in the detail:

1. Wind up the National Insurance system:

The employee 12 per cent contribution should be added to

the basic income tax rate making a new basic rate of 32 per

cent (with appropriate adjustments for older workers, the

self-employed and people receiving income from savings

and pensions). The higher tax rate should rise to 42 per

cent to take account of the two per cent NIC levied on

earnings above the upper earnings limit. The 13.8 per cent

employers’ NICs should become a Payroll Tax.

 

2. Establish entitlement to the new state pension through

residency

Scrapping NICs means new eligibility rules are needed for

the state pension. Eligibility should depend on 10+ years

of residency in this country. Pension Credit should be

abolished.

3. Phase in a state pension means-test for new retirees

Over the next 40 years, if NICs are abolished now, the

contributory component of people’s state pensions will

gradually get smaller, and the taxpayer-funded component

will get larger, until eventually the whole of every state

pension claim will be funded out of tax revenues. The tax-

funded component of state pensions should be means-

tested. 

 

4. Freeze current National Insurance entitlements and recognise

them as government debt

Entitlements based on contributions up to the time National

Insurance is scrapped should be honoured by freezing

people’s NIC records, indexing their existing entitlement

to take account of inflation, and paying this amount as a

weekly or monthly pension from when they retire. The

future cost of these payments (currently estimated at £3.8

trillion) should be explicitly acknowledged as part of total

public sector borrowing. 

 

5: Make membership of workplace pension schemes compulsory

The right of workers to opt out of workplace pensions

should be ended. With a means-tested state pension, saving

in private retirement accounts has to be made compulsory

to minimise moral hazard. 

 

6. Boost personal retirement savings accounts

Minimum contributions into the new workplace pensions

schemes add up to 11 per cent of salary (combining the

employee’s and employer’s contribution, and adding the

value of government tax relief). This is too low to guarantee

self-reliance in retirement. Contributions should be boosted

by reducing the government’s tax-take from employees and

employers. In particular, savings accruing from means-

testing the state pension should be used to reduce the employer Payroll Tax from 13.8 per cent to 12 per cent (switching the 1.8 per cent reduction into an enhanced

employer contribution to workplace pensions), and the basic

rate of income tax for employees from 32 per cent to 30 per

cent (switching the 2 per cent reduction into an enhanced

employee contribution to the workplace pension). This

would take the minimum total contribution into workplace

pensions to almost 15 per cent. Proceeds from privatisation

of Royal Mail and the state-owned bank assets should also

be used to boost workers’ pension accounts. 

 

7. Gradually extend the permitted uses of workplace pension

funds to develop them into personal welfare accounts

Contributory unemployment and sickness benefits should

be scrapped two years after NICs are ended (all claimants

would then get the non-contributory Universal Credit).

At the same time, people should be allowed to use their

personal welfare accounts (or borrow against them) to

provide a benefits-level income for the first 6 months out

of work, during which time there should be no conditions

applied to them. Existing and future student loans should

be integrated into personal welfare accounts and, over

time, accounts should be further extended to cover periods

of parental leave to care for children and basic insurance

against old-age care costs. 

 

8. Apply activity conditions to receipt of working-age benefits

Unconditional support for people who cannot be expected

to work (severely disabled people and single parents with

infant children under one year) should continue, but for

those who are capable of working full- or part-time, and

who cannot support themselves from their own personal

welfare accounts, fairness requires that appropriate work-

based activity conditions should be attached to receipt of

state benefits. No activity conditions should be attached

to jobless people drawing on their own personal welfare

accounts

CPAG make me choke

I am "stunned" by the audacity of the Child Poverty Action Group in their comments about the error in CYF data collection and reporting.

Child Poverty Action Group researcher Donna Wynd said she was "stunned" to learn of the massive under-reporting.

Wynd has recently  (inadvertently?) been involved in her own case of massive under-reporting.

In their latest analysis of CYF abuse data, the percentage of children with a substantiated finding of abuse living in each site office area was under calculated by 10 times.

Originally their report stated, '...the proportion of 0-17 year olds who were victims of abuse in Papakura was not 4.0% but 0.40 of 1%.' "

In fact the proportion was 4 percent (608 distinct cases in an estimated 0-17 population of 14,413). The flawed methodology was repeated for every CYF site office recorded.

Then they calculated the rate of benefit dependence using the total population rather than the relevant 18-64 population resulting in another "massive under-report".

Ministry chief executive Brendan Boyle said data from 2011 onwards was affected. "The initial review of data shows a margin of error mainly around 2 to 3 per cent, up to 8 per cent."
Donna Wynd of Child Poverty Action said: "All they're doing is keeping a tally. How you can make such a simple error?"

Goodness Donna. So much charity.

Finally, even the Herald on Sunday account is ironically a "massive under-report",

Child, Youth and Family is to reveal this week the true extent of abuse, after finding it has been under-reporting notifications by as much as 8 per cent. The number in the past year is believed to be between 1,000 and 4,000 more than the 49,398 reported.

From memory (the data is currently off-line) there were 121,000 notifications in the last year available. 49,398 will refer to those requiring follow-up I imagine. The actual number of substantiated findings in 2011/12 was 21,526.

Three 'yes' votes

Three 'yes' votes just about to go in the post.

As I emailed Leighton Smith yesterday, in response to people unsure whether they should participate in this fiasco,

If there is the remotest chance of wiping the smirk off Russel Norman's face, I'm taking it.

Persuading people to work

The Minister of social Development has taken the unusual step of spelling out how much benefits pay versus income from work. She's probably chosen South Auckland because that's where the numbers of welfare-dependent sole parents are highest :

An average sole parent with two children under thirteen, living in South Auckland would receive around $642 on benefit, including accommodation supplement and a minimal extra allowance for costs.
“If that sole parent works just 15 hours while receiving benefit, they would be $107 better off, taking home $750 a week.”
“If they are able to go off benefit and by working just 20 hours a week on a minimum wage, they would be $171 better off each week at $814.”
Going off benefit and working 40 hours a week on a minimum wage, that same sole parent would be $190 better off at $833 a week with the Family Tax Credit, Accommodation Supplement and In-Work tax credit.
“I get how hard it can be to make the move from welfare to work, but it makes such a difference to your state of mind, not to mention financially.”
Lisa, a sole parent in West Auckland wanted to work and earn her own money and found a part time job with 20 hours work a week.
Her work focused case manager did a Better Off Assessment and Lisa was able to see how much better off she’d be doing 30 hours a week, without a benefit but picking up the In-Work tax Credit.

The act of issuing the release tells me that the financial incentive to work is still not enough. People do their own sums and figure out it's easier not to work. But the release also angers me. People should be getting off benefits because they should be supporting themselves. If they are capable, it's wrong to live off someone else.They shouldn't need to be plied with incentives.

While the politician in me accepts beneficiaries need to be financially incentivised to work, the philosophical me finds the idea quite repugnant.

(And it's somewhat ironic to read the Minister pushing what was Labour policy in 2005. It highlights how National has moved to the left in the area of economic redistribution policy. This pushes Labour/Green further left. Which means that if we get a change of government next year, in the welfare area anyway, the new one will be worse then the Clark/Cullen administration.)

Bribery for breastfeeding?

This story was sent to me by a reader:

New mothers are to be offered up to £200 in shopping vouchers to encourage them to breastfeed their babies.

The pilot scheme is being targeted at deprived areas of South Yorkshire and Derbyshire and funded through a collaboration between government and the medical research sector.

If successful, a nationwide pilot could be rolled out in England next year...The team behind the project said breastfeeding was a cause of health inequalities, pointing to research that showed it helped prevent health problems such as upset stomachs and chest infections as well as leading to better educational attainment.

Hold on a minute. Why aren't leftists creating a hue and cry about  bottle fed babies being further deprived by this 'discrimination'?

Can righting health inequalities justify creating financial inequalities?

And really, what (able to) mother needs vouchers to persuade her to breastfeed her child?

Is  bribery the new cultural currency? It started far more subtly (and happily not widely recognised as such) with social security decades ago. Today welfare has morphed into 'show me the money' for no more than fulfilling natural functions.

Teenage birth statistics - misleading description from govt

According to Paula Bennett,

We have seen teen birth numbers fall for the last three years – despite rising previously. And the birth rate for teens is at its lowest since 1962.

This says to me that in 1962 the teenage birth rate was pretty much the same as it is today. That's incorrect. In 1962 it was 54 (per 1,000 15-19 year-olds). Today it is 25.

What the PR should have said was that the rate is the lowest in the period for which data is available ie since 1962.

Otherwise it's timely for Bennett to point out all of the practical stuff she has implemented. And when she says she "is passionate"  about helping teenage parents, I believe her.

"A snowflakes chance"

Always interested in phraseology and idiom I was unfamiliar with David Cunliffe's choice to describe the likelihood of John Tamihere becoming a Labour candidate,

"I wouldn't be in a hurry to sign him up and I'd say he's got a snowflake's chance of becoming a Labour candidate."

A snowflake's chance? Where?

It's a snowflake's chance in hell. I wonder why he didn't use the whole phrase? It might conjure up images of just how hellish a place the Labour Party caucus might be. For Tamihere anyway.

But wait. There's another better known phrase which compares the likelihood of something happening to the likelihood of hell freezing over.  Yet the Eagles famously said this about their bitter breakup in 1980 and the chances of reforming. Of course they eventually did, leading to the sublime "Hell Freezes Over" album and tour.

So perhaps the better expression regarding the possibility of John Tamihere rejoining Labour as a candidate is 'never say never'.

(Another saying that caught my attention recently was 'busted fish' used by Rodney Hide on a Radio Live panel to describe Len Brown. It later appeared in print as 'busted flush'. Both are accurate but I like the first much more.The imagery is much stronger.)

Compulsory pregnancy checks?

The NZ Herald reports:

Up to 90 per cent of pregnant women will have to get an antenatal check within 10 weeks if the Government proceeds with bold recommendations made in a major inquiry into children's health and child abuse.

And how does that requirement get enforced? What happens if they don't? Some women actively avoid confirming a pregnancy in order to stave off lifestyle changes.

 In parts of Auckland, the proportion of women seeing a doctor early in their pregnancy was as low as 16 per cent - a trend described as "Third World" by the inquiry's authors.

Which parts of Auckland would they be? Funny how that's not detailed.

Bold changes were also proposed to reduce the high rate of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, including warning labels on all alcohol products and consideration of higher tax excises.

Oh surprise, surprise. Whack up the price of alcohol for responsible drinkers because morons wilfully ignore their pregnancy and continue to binge.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. You can't make people more responsible by removing their responsibilities.

More evidence of police intransigence

Notice that the victim of violence in this case, run over repeatedly by his partner, is a man.

 Waikato police district on-call manager Acting Detective Inspector Ross McKay confirmed the man, who is in Waikato Hospital with serious injuries, and the woman were in a relationship. ''Sadly, just seven days out from White Ribbon Week, today's incident also highlights the dangers associated with domestic violence and police urge anyone who feels unsafe in their home situation to seek help,'' he said.

Doesn't the Inspector understand that the White Ribbon campaign is specifically about domestic violence perpetrated by men?

 White Ribbon is an international movement that condemns men’s violence towards women.

Dear me. Is this another indicator that the police have the 'wrong' attitude? That by dragging White Ribbon Week into this they have disrespected the holy grail of female victimhood?

10 DPB facts for Kerre McIvor

The Herald on Sunday features a sappy column from Kerre McIvor about how glad she is we have the DPB/Sole Parent Support.

Over time, the DPB has evolved - it's now the sole parent benefit - and critics of the benefit may feel their concerns were justified. There has been an increase in the number of single mothers; it is easier for men to walk away from their obligations; some people take the benefit rather than find work. But I believe that to be a very small minority.

In response, here are ten DPB facts:

1/ One in five children will be on it by the end of their birth year

2/ At April 2012 there were 179,204 children dependent on the DPB

3/ Sole parents spend an average 15.8 years on benefit

4/ Going back just ten years, researchers found at least a third of sole parents had started on welfare as teenagers

5/ 46 percent of sole parent support recipients are Maori (4 out of 5 Maori children are born outside of marriage.)

6/ 83 percent of all children with a substantiated finding of abuse had appeared in the benefit system before age two

7/ 48 percent of sole parents on the benefit had no educational qualifications; 44% had school qualifications only (2005)

8/ 6 out of 10 were in debt to MSD

9/ Sole parents and their children are more likely to have mental health problems

10/ Of all children turning 15 in 2008, one in five had spent seven or more of their first 14 years on a benefit - usually the DPB



McIvor finishes her column with this:

 I'm grateful to live in a country where there's a safety net for vulnerable children - because after all, that's who the DPB really benefits.