octave

Yep School education is for 13 years, divided into: primary school for 7 or 8 years, from kindergarten or preschool to year 6 or 7 secondary school for 3 to 4 years - years 7 to 10 or years 8 to 10 senior secondary school for 2 years - years 11 and 12.

This must surely be the maximum rather than the average. School education (primary and secondary) is 13 years. This leaves 8.5 years which I am guessing must be tertiary education, which I think sounds like an advanced degree. The chart that Nomadpete posted perhaps takes into account that some may spread their uni degree out by studying part-time, which is not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion. I don't think the average years of education for the average person is as high as 21.5 years. Here is a table of mean years spent in education https://www.worldeconomics.com/Indicator-Data/ESG/Social/Mean-Years-of-Schooling/ It looks like 13 years is the mean

I do think people have a negative bias when judging our education system. Whilst there is much about the education system that I dislike (we homeschooled) I think there is a lot about it that is good. Looking through various lists of top education systems Australia usually comes within the top 10. Best Education System in the World – Top 20 Countries Countries by education index Australia Ranked Third-Best Higher Education System And many more. These lists use various criteria however it is not possible to find a list where Australia is near the bottom. Here is an example of the negative bias in reporting from News.com NAPLAN test scores reveal one in three participants below expectations "One in three of the country’s 1.3 million school students who sat the 2023 NAPLAN tests failed to meet literacy and numeracy expectations in the latest sign that Australia’s educational standards are continuing to slide. Aggregated results from the 2023 National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy testing, released on Wednesday, showed about 65 per cent of students fell into the “exceeding” and “strong” categories when test scores were averaged across year levels and testing domains. But 23 per cent and 10 per cent were in the “developing” and “needs additional support” levels respectively, The remaining 2 per cent were exempt from sitting the test." The headline could also read "two thirds of students are in the "exceeding" and "strong" categories It is not clear whether standards are sliding or not. The assessment system changed for the last NAPLAN which makes it a little unclear. What do the NAPLAN test changes mean for schools and students? New standards "Another key change to NAPLAN is students’ results will now be reported against four levels of achievement instead of the existing ten “proficiency bands”. These new levels are “exceeding”, “strong”, “developing” and “needs additional support”. Some media commentary has suggested the new standards will “water down” existing expectations. However, there will actually be a higher threshold for students to meet the new minimum standard." The News.com article then groups together "developing" with "needs additional support" I would suggest that these 2 categories are lumped together in order to get an overly negative headline. The headline could surely be "Ten percent of students need additional support." We do need to be always striving for better and be on the lookout for any declines however we also need to appreciate the good.

The problem with school is that it is very much a one-size-fits-all-all system. During my work as a private music teacher, I taught all sorts of students and I had the luxury of teaching individually. One of the last students I taught before retirement was Aspergers or I think it is now called Autism Spectrum Disorder. This boy was a bit of a challenge although it was made clear to me by his mother that she did not expect great results. This boy's school life was at the time hell both in the classroom and in the playground. My philosophy was to impart some knowledge when possible but otherwise make his lesson something not to be feared or hated. When Covid hit the music school transitioned to online which strangely seemed to work better for him and we started to make progress. The year before last I decided to retire. I received an email from his mother saying her son was devastated and was there any way I could continue teaching him online. I could not really say no. During this year he really started to find his way. He became interested in jazz and improvisation. Sometimes some lessons would be not so good but generally things were going well. I was going to be teaching him again this year however he decided that his real passion was composing and he wanted to concentrate on this rather than playing. To me, this was great news. Before I taught this boy he had numerous other lessons on other instruments (piano, Guitar) but unfortunately, those teachers gave up on him because he did not fit the mould. My last contact with this family was this lovely email (warning this is a little bit self-congratulatory) On Sat, Feb 11, 2023 at 9:13 PM ******************************.com> wrote: The point is that this would have gone differently if I had presumed him to be stupid, poorly raised or perhaps just badly behaved. Also understanding the science of autism spectrum helps. This kid is not stupid and has not been raised badly Things like Autism have always existed we just labeled them as weird or dumb. this boy is actually highly intelligent.

The larger Tesla battery is 82. It would be when charging from empty 82x0.65 = $53.30. The average efficiency of a Tesla charger is 94% Tesla charging stations charge between $0.43 and $0.69 A Tesla Model 3 Long range is supposed to use 13.1KWh per 100km. A return trip from Sydney to Brisbane say 1800km should cost around about $170 at a charging price of $0.69. Of course, it could be less than this. Your initial charge would be from home. There are good deals for off-peak charging such as this one. An energy plan designed specifically for Electric Vehicle owners 6c/kWh super off-peak discount applied to your overnight market rates between 12am - 6am local time.

Quite some time ago. Date % Voters Issue Result 9 March 1949 56.40 Six o'clock closing Three-to-one majority to retain 23 September 1967 71.20 Six o'clock closing Two-to-one majority for later opening

I don't think anyone is going to change anyone's mind. This is why I now only say what I believe and I don't tell others what they should believe. There are several countries that are similar to Australia in that they were colonized and have a pre-existing population. Canada, New Zealand, the USA, Sweden, Norway and Finland. All of these countries have some form of treaty or indigenous parliament and or constitutional recognition. The question I ask myself is, "Are these countries more divided than us?" Are thier indigenous people doing better or worse than our indigenous people? Are there other countries that don't have either some kind of treaty, constitutional recognition or advisory arrangement? It makes sense to me to examine other country's systems in order to see which things work and which things don't. The one thing we can all agree on is that the present system does not work.

I am a prolific photographer (not necessarily a good one). I came across these photos I took a few years ago and I thought they qualified as photography and aviation related.

And that is one of the reasons I am voting yes.

Yes, to allow for the differences in brightness. Most astrophotographs use a little cheating such as colour enhancement or stacking. "To take advantage of the moment, Stewart took several images and composited them together in post-production to get the best possible result. “The photo consists of three images. The first is an image taken when Saturn was coming out from behind the Moon,” Stewart tells My Modern Met. “I then shot images of Saturn and the Moon separately just after the event and processed them to give better results. Then, I overlayed the two good images over the original one. It is a bit of a cheat, but because of the high surface brightness of the Moon and low brightness of Saturn, it's impossible to get a good image of the occultation with just one shot.” Here are a couple of my meager efforts

I recently had to sell my mother's house on her behalf. She lives in a different state. I was quite surprised at how many legal documents I was able to sign online. I suspect it won't be long before we tell kids about the times when someone would ride past every house in the country, every day to deliver letters. We will explain that letters are like emails but you write them on paper.

Isn't this it? Constitutional amendment The proposed law that Australians are being asked to approve at the referendum would insert a new section into the Constitution:

The referendum booklet arrived in my letter box today. It presents both the yes and no case.

Can you please post a link? I believe that the government is not funding either side. Yes, there has been funding to run the referendum. Both the yes and no sides have received private funds from various organizations. https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/factlab-meta/government-spending-on-education-campaign-not-yes-case-for-voice#:~:text=The verdict,-False.&text=The federal government did not,taking sides in the debate.

I don't much care which way people are going to vote but my plea is not to accept false information or fear-mongering (on either side). At the heart of Trumpism is the notion that verifiable facts are not important and that asserting something loudly is enough. No public money for 'Yes' or 'No' campaigns in Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum

According to the AEC in the 1988 referendum, just .86 percent were informal votes due to ticks and crosses. In terms of language barriers, I would assume that election materials are produced in a variety of languages. Either way, I don't think it is a result-changing issue. I do worry though that Dutton et al could go down the Trumpian road if the referendum is passed and claim that it was rigged. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/peter-dutton-cross-about-aec-tick-ruling-on-voice-referendum-20230824-p5dz7q.html

Just for clarification, this has not been recently changed and it has been the case since 1988.

We went for a ride along the Ballarat to Skipton rail trail today. We had lunch under this impressive bridge. "Nimons Bridge was Victoria's fourth-tallest timber trestle bridge when built, and is the third-tallest surviving example. It is also the second-largest composite bridge combining traditional timber piers with rolled steel joist spans and a timber deck." Built in the 1850s

There are also implications for those who go into aged care The house is subject to a means test. We have just been through this when my mother went into aged care, we had to sell her house for her (which is fine)

Absolutely, we won't be leaving much of an inheritance and there are no expectations from my offspring. We opted for not working too much instead of wealth and a big house.

So is this what you have done? I don't necessarily disagree with this but having been a landlord for a few years I did not much enjoy it, It is easy to think that being a landlord just involves buying a few properties and then sitting back while the money rolls in but it is a little more involved than that. Buying houses, doing them up, and selling them can be lucrative if you do it right but it is still work, OK if you enjoy it but a pain if you don't. There are many paths to living a financially secure and happy life. I could have bought a second house and rented it out and maintained it all the tie hoping my tenants would be responsible and would not screw me over. Instead, I chose to easy route, reasonably safe investments, and bugger all work to do.

The value of bricks and mortar is irrelevant unless you rent it out, borrow against it, or sell it. I know quite a few people who have a house that is worth a lot but complain that they don't have enough money to live on. What good is a million-dollar house if you struggle on the pension?

I read an article the other day about some people in Wellington NZ who bought a house on a large block together. I think it was 2 couples and 2 single folk. Wellington house prices are crazy. They bought this shabby house which was quite expensive (for 1 buyer) and demolished it. They then built what could be described as 6 townhouse-type buildings and some shared facilities. I think we are a bit stuck on the 3-bedroom house on a suburban block containing mum dad and 2.7 kids. My son has his own company and has a reasonable income. He could have bought a regular house but instead bought a house with his business partner and his business partner's wife (also a business partner). They bought a large 2 story house that had duplicated facilities on each floor. They also own a bunch of cool cars together. We consider this couple he owns a house with as his family and also our family. I am often struck by how well they all get on with each other, I wonder if stubbornly sticking to the dream of one family in a house on a block might be a little limiting.

In our case, we built our first house in 1985 during the high-interest period although we did have a slight advantage in that my wife worked at the Commonwealth Bank so we got a slight discount (still high-interest rates though) If I remember correctly $30K and the rest (25k) came from a defence home loan. After about 5 years (1990) we sold up and bought 44 acres in the bush, we owner built our modest house and virtually dropped out. We lived well on minimal income. One thing we did that enabled us to retire early was selling our 44-acre property and we bought modest premises. We stuck this money from our property into super. We did not see the sense in being property well off but still going to work. Our place now is not worth a great deal (but we like living here) and we are reasonably income secure. I cant really understand what joy there is in having a million-dollar property but dragging yourself into a job you don't enjoy or not having enough to live on.