Mr Gove's not just bad at Maths, he gets muddled over statistics too.

Janet Downs's picture
 1
Mr Gove announced here“The opinion poll concerned was a YouGov opinion poll conducted between the 19 and 20 January, which showed that 44% of people aged 18 to 24 were opposed to the abolition of the education maintenance allowance, and 45% of people in that age group supported the abolition of EMA, which meant that there was a one-point lead for the Government position.”

But YouGov says the opposite:

“The British public is largely split over the Government’s plans to abolish the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), with slightly more people disagreeing with the plans than agreeing, but no majority view on either side.

46% thought that the EMA should be kept in place

Compared to a substantial 41% who wanted EMA written off by the Government.”

Another own goal, Mr Gove.
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Comments

Janet Downs's picture
Thu, 31/03/2011 - 13:18

Oh, silly me! I didn’t realise that Mr Gove was talking about a SUBSET of the YouGov poll. So he WAS correct in saying that 45% 18 to 24 year olds supported the abolition of EMAs while 44% opposed abolition” (10% didn’t know). Pity he forgot to mention that the public as a whole opposed abolition. Talk about being economical with the truth!

The number in the weighted sample of 18 to 24 year olds in the poll was 222 (unweighted 132 – the smallest unweighted subset). Mr Gove must really be struggling if he has to rely on a sample of 222 (132 unweighted) young people to deliver what he thought was a killer statistic.

I think he would be better off asking FE college principals.
http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/YG-Archives-Pol...

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