By: Larry Williams | Thursday, May 17, 2012

Teachers

The changes to funding of class sizes have not been received well by the education unions.

The key to these changes is the funding formula. That is what has changed, not class sizes. The school decides class sizes.

90 percent of schools will gain or have a net loss of less than one full-time equivalent according to the Minister.

Considering there is $60 million being poured into improving teacher recruitment and training, this looks like a reasonable compromise.

What I find difficult to get a grip of, is this constant slagging by the unions. Teachers are good people. We have some great teachers. It's a bloody hard job. But the relentless anti attitude looks more like a political agenda than anything.

The NZ Principals Federation president Paul Drummond said "the class size debate and the research is unequivocal - the smaller class sizes benefit students and are better for them."

Oh really?

Honorary Auckland University education professor John Hattie says that class size is "irrelevant".

Dr Ben Jensen from the Gratton Institute in Melbourne says "the vast majority of studies around the world have shown that class size reductions do not significantly improve schooling and student outcomes."

So who do we believe here?

The point is, the claim that this is all done and dusted is just not true.

Nobody is saying that it’s not nice to have small classes, but at the end of the day it’s the quality of teaching that counts.

Dotcom

Government departments were aware that the FBI had an interest in Dotcom before he was arrested, according to documents.

Four branches of government were aware six months before Dotcom was arrested.

That is probably why his application to buy the mansion in Coatesville was rejected.

The more concerning thing is that Immigration was armed with at least some information about the FBI interest but still chose to grant residency.

This aspect and Dotcoms previous convictions, you would have thought would have raised some warning bells.

Collins

ACC Minister Judith Collins has filed a defamation suit against Labour MP's Trevor Mallard and Andrew Little.

Mallard says “I see no reason to co-operate in what is clearly a vexatious action.”

Little says she will have to hire "thuggish characters" to serve the papers.

Both of them reckon that Collins wouldn't want the matter to go to trial.

Have I missed something here? Doesn't filing papers mean you intend to take it to trial unless Mallard and Little want to settle out of court?

Facebook

The Facebook IPO is going to be hot.

It is way over subscribed. For every 30 people wanting shares, there is one share.

It’s so popular the number of shares for sale has been boosted by 25 percent.

The hype is driven around the coolness of Facebook, not the value in the company.

GM has just pulled its ads from Facebook because they were not selling cars from their ads. GM is one of the biggest advertisers in the US.

Monetising Facebook is proving difficult. Google is far superior in this respect.

Facebook will have a value of $100 billion - and that is ridiculous