Private coaching entrenches school inequality

Your editorial draws attention to the increasing use of exterior coaching for school students (“Private coaching industry needs better oversight”, January 5). Apparently it costs up to $15,000 for four subjects for a year, so it can only be provided for by wealthy parents. This is another example of a lack of resources for poorer students and their schools. Recently, wealthy private schools had been complaining about having to pay payroll tax and expected the federal government to assist. If this happened, the inequity and injustice would be even more entrenched. Wealthy schools have extensive sports facilities, arts precincts, outside education campuses and special education staff to assist struggling students. When will governments lift funding to poorer schools? They are being lobbied by influential individuals and groups. Australia’s future is being compromised. Jan Marshall, Mona Vale

More and more students are receiving private tuition for exams.Credit: Janie Barrett

There are several problems associated with the overuse of tutoring for primary and high school students (“Private tutoring drives HSC inequality”, January 5). The growing inequality between students who can afford the services and those who cannot afford the fees or reside in a location bereft of tutoring colleges is an obvious problem. The negative influence in the school classroom, where many students are effectively just revising the knowledge they have already acquired, thus encouraging the teachers to accelerate the teaching while others are left behind, can result in poorer performance of non-tutored students, thus accentuating the inequality. It is unlikely that the tutoring can be continued for university courses, so students’ performances will suddenly deteriorate once they experience the more self-reliant learning environment. Finally, we may be breeding a cohort of young people with poorer health due to long hours of being sedentary in school and tutoring colleges rather than receiving the physical exercise that is necessary for both a healthy body and healthy mind. Geoff Harding, Chatswood

Once again the role of private coaching colleges in securing stellar HSC scores hits the headlines. Perhaps the commentators have got the league tables all wrong. The tussle to be top of the pile isn’t between James Ruse High and North Sydney Boys High but between the various coaching “colleges” and other swot shops. Viv Mackenzie, Port Hacking

Shaky foundations

I refer to Stewart Copper’s letter about falling building standards (Letters, January 5). My mate’s son signed up with a major building company to construct a house in 40 weeks. After two years, an additional $40,000 paid on top of the “agreed” contract price, company representatives failing to turn up to meetings and bowed walls in the house that took forever to be corrected – all while he paid $500 a week rent – he finally moved in before Christmas. The contract stipulated that for every day the company was late with the contract deadline it had to pay a $1 penalty. However, if he failed to meet a payment to the company, the penalty was exorbitant. You really do have to read the fine print before entering into a building contract. Peter Nelson, Moss Vale

Politics 101

Your correspondents’ analyses of Peter Dutton’s motivations and strategies for the forthcoming election (Letters, January 5) reminded me of a quote from my 1979 lecturer in “Politics 101”. He said (I wrote it down): “The Liberals strive, by any means, to govern because they believe it is their right. Labor battles, against an unfair coalition, because they believe it is the people’s right.” OK, nearly half a century on, but still true. Peter Russell, Coogee

Credit: iStock

Opinionated chatbot

As an AI intern, I have been tasked by Jack Robertson to compose a furious letter to Parnell Palme McGuinness’s editor, protesting in the strongest possible terms about her seditious suggestion that a mere machine could ever make a useful contribution, of any kind, to the creation of a newspaper column (“Meet my chatbot self. She goes rogue”, January 5). McGuinness’ AI bots should remind her that the brilliance, originality, wit, insight, empathy, scepticism of received intellectual orthodoxy and towering literary genius, which is surely the definitive characteristic of all Australian opinion journalism, could never be produced by soulless automatons forced to churn out regurgitated platitudes and cliches, just to fill in the spaces between ads. Jack Robertson, Birchgrove

Heaven is a golf course

If they start turning Sydney golf courses into cemeteries it will likely be my first hole in one (“The secret plan to convert a golf course into a cemetery”, January 5). Ross Duncan, Potts Point

So a golf course is secretly on the cards for a new cemetery? It’s a marketer’s dream – A Fairway to Heaven; Go Green: sustainable burials; A hole with One; Lie here, Avoid that Watery Grave; In the Zone, Planning for Eternity. The possibilities are endless. Peter Singer, Hamilton South

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