Funding model to end school inequality. The Deputy Prime Minister wants to extend the model of funding private schools on a socio-economic basis to public schools in a move to confront disadvantage across both sectors. The proposal, expected to be addressed at the next Council of Australian Governments meeting, would involve extending the contentious SES funding model designed by the former Howard government to all Australian schools. The Australian, 15 March 2008. [School Education Headlines]
10:14:34 PM    

Victoria's investment hubs. Regional development agencies in Europe and the USA are flat-out selling their regions. But here, we leave it to the states. Not smart. In recent months we have identified 12 major investment hubs in Queensland and 20 in NSW that would provide the core of a national investment attraction framework.  Victoria is well-positioned to attract foreign investment in high-end activities - track record [...] [Investment & Innovation Forum]
10:05:51 PM    

Garnaut takes the right stance.

For so long, the big issue with emissions trading was how permits would be allocated. This was an issue not because it would matter for efficiency but it would determine how the costs of dealing with climate change would be shared. This distributional issue looms large in most economic reform efforts.

Ross Garnaut has come out with a clear stance on this issue — there will be no free permits except where there is demonstrable international competition concerns. That means that the power companies will be on their own. That too has left them scrambling for arguments. The first is that they would not invest in R&D to improve carbon efficiency. Not true, the costs in that are fixed costs while the benefits are stimulated by having a carbon price to save on. (See Harry Clarke’s excellent summary). Now they are claiming there will be no new investment and so there will be power shortages. Again, this is nonsense. This move will devalue existing assets but let’s face it they should have been devalued years ago. Socially, it turns out, they had low value the minute they were commissioned. It has just taken a while for the private value to reflect that. (Although the NSW government who owns many of these assets surely already took the social value into account).

Having an alignment of private and social values is good for investment. It will mean that it will utilise the correct fuels while moving to satisfy any imbalances between supply and demand at new electricity prices. After all, the power companies may claim there will be shortages but higher electricity prices will reduce demand too so that spectre is very unlikely.

So I think the power companies have some work to do if they want to mount a convincing economic argument for some sort of payout. At the moment, I can’t see a legitimate economic argument there.

[CoreEcon]
7:46:07 PM    

On deliberate practice. I am reading Richard Sennett's (2008) The Craftsman London; Allen Lane. It is a brilliant attempt to make explicit the implicit or tacit "knowledge" which underpins craft skill; and it fails. I've read a couple of reviews, such as Roger Scruton's in the Sunday Times and Fiona MacCarthy's in the Guardian. They are both respectful and enthusiastic, but also suggest that he has missed out somewhere. Perhaps we want him to. Perhaps craftsmanship ought to be a little mysterious?

Sennett tackles his topic in the form of an erudite meditation, in the manner of Montaigne, albeit at much greater length. This is becoming, it seems to me, an ever more popular genre; I've also just read Lewis Hyde's (1983/2006) The Gift, and Thomas De Zengotita's (2005) Mediated and I confess I have given up on Michael Frayn's (2006) The Human Touch. They are all fascinating and provoke admiration at the range of material and allusion they contain, but they do tend to attract attention more to the author than to the topic, and on the whole they stay within the author's intellectual comfort zone.

The linked article from the title of this entry (pardon the political allusions in it, which will soon be very dated) is much more hard-headed and of course journalistic. It is almost certainly more useful; and I wonder why Sennett (I must confess I still have 50 pages to go) does not draw on this well-established research tradition. After all, he draws lessons from playing music and boning a chicken...

However; watch this, and think about what kind of practice regime these guys have to engage in to exhibit this effortless and entertaining skill.

By James A. [Recent Reflection]
6:34:21 PM    

Career development standards revised. The Revised Professional Standards for Australian Career Development Practitioners (2007) will provide Australians with assurance that career development services provided by Career Industry Council of Australia (CICA) members are supported by published ethical and professional standards and fully implemented by 2012. A complete pdf version of the document is now on the CICA website. [edna education news]
5:04:36 PM    

Cash or culture?.

Farrah Tomazin has an interesting piece in today’s Age on strategies to improve the performance of Indigenous children in Victorian schools, identifying a divide between those who say ‘change the school culture’ and those who say ’spend more money’.

[Andrew Leigh]
5:03:00 PM