Is LPHS the real king of scholarships?

IN your report (ODT 10.2.17), you made grand the claim of King’s High School ‘‘Boys kings of scholarships in Otago’’.

However, your reporter has made one basic error of analysis, one that any student of statistics might have seen the answer to: In any given data set, you should compare rates of achievement against the sample set size.

King’s has a roll of approximately 1050 pupils. They attained 28 scholarships. Therefore roughly 26.67 per 1000 pupils.

Logan Park High School achieved 24 scholarships. It has a roll of approximately 640 pupils. Therefore roughly 37.50 per 1000 pupils; 37.50 over 26.67 is roughly 1.4 times as good a result.

And consider this:

Logan Park does not have special targeted accelerated scholarship classes; nor does it have special targeted transport options to attract the best and brightest pupils from across the greater Dunedin area. It teaches everyone that arrives at the school with a skill, a compassion, an empathy that most other schools in Dunedin will never ever be able to achieve.

Other schools talk of ‘‘the special character’’ of their school. Logan Park does not talk it. It does it.

Logan Park has achieved 152 scholarships since 2009. That is an average of over 30 per 1000 pupils every year, for the last eight years. It is the one true test of a school’s teaching ability, being the only 100% externally marked assessment.

Someone needs to sing of them loudly from the rooftops. The principal and staff however, do not crow. And I cannot sing.

Neil Gaudin

Maori Hill

NZ Post

NZ Post seems determined to heap misery on misery.

Having recently ripped away my local post box on Highgate it has now (17.2.17) delivered a Christmas card to a Ravensbourne address. The card was posted in Dunedin (as shown by their date stamp) on Friday,

December 9, 2016.

Any chance of a refund?

Post early for Christmas indeed. Rodney Bryant

Roslyn