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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Another day and another set of front pages featuring the beleaguered EdSec Gavin Williamson
Once again EdSec Gavin Williamson is all over the papers pic.twitter.com/1D9mOFrm1R
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https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/08/19/asia-pacific/communist-party-insider-denounced-xi/
Except the Star is almost as invisible as he is.
More interesting is that MPs are starting to question the wisdom of the last couple of decades which is to hive off responsibility to executive agencies like Ofqual in order to shield the government from poor outcomes and bad decisions.
Simon Hoare, a senior Tory MP, said: "Number 10 needs to think about how all of these executive agencies, quangos and arms-length organisations work. They are taking, on a daily basis, political decisions over which ministers have no control, no right of question, no right of direction and no right of overrule.
"We need a root and branch review which means we might have to have a larger civil service, more departmental ministers, but the time has come where unaccountable quangos are past their sell-by dates."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/18/ofqual-chief-staring-sack-mp-calls-quango-absolutely-useless/
(Any relation?)
Er - no. Nothing would be more likely to see the government forfeit what little confidence is left on this issue than having imbeciles like Johnson and Cummings in direct charge of this. Not even Williamson, improbable though that may seem.
Halfon is usually very good on education but he’s slipped up there.
He would - and I mean this seriously - have been better calling for the ESC to take charge of it themselves. They’re quite good.
what is to stop me, when I want to return, simply crossing a border - to Bulgaria or Turkey, and flying back from there, where there is, as yet, no need to self isolate on return?
https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1295869619836801025?s=09
Hillary Clinton had absurd odds right till the end.
They haven't paid out on the Democratic vice-presidential nomination yet though. It looks like that's happening 9-11pm EDT tonight so again should pay out by 4am ish tomorrow morning.
The playground is marked into bubbles with fencing. You can play football etc in your bubble but if your ball goes into someone else's bubble you don't get it back. The senior year, which my son now is, gets to go into the town at lunch but none of the other children do. So far as possible you do not go within 2m of anyone not in your bubble and are discouraged from approaching staff. Work is being handed out and in some cases returned electronically. Where that is not possible the scripts are being left on a table for 72 hours before the recipient touches them. There is a complicated 1 way system through the building and restrictions on which doors can be used.
In short things are a very long way from normal. This seems the most severe scenario of the 3 the school planned. I am surprised they are still at this level as things slowly slacken off elsewhere but there is no doubt that they are very aware that any outbreak of Covid will close the school once again.
Yet I come back from a day of holiday and instantly find https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53830172 as the top story in the BBC education section.
Now I really shouldn't be surprised that you believed the headline and ignored the detail but even so.
Trump: backed off the boards
Pence: 1.02 (was 1.04 and flicked out to 1.05 yesterday)
What is clear is that getting kids back into secondary schools safely requires an immense amount of effort and planning affecting every aspect of school life including break times, timetables, meals, work distribution, etc etc. This is not something, if it is to be done right, that schools can start thinking about in September.
The political decisions by all four nations may have been the right thing to do but the problems if has caused are huge and it personally worries me for my granddaughters university placing when she takes her A levels next year
I think we should all accept that the quangos and politicians across the land have failed comprehensively and I really do worry about the long term damage to education due to the debasing of the whole system
Certainly the advice they gave to Ministers that exam results could be fixed by means of an algorithm was seriously screwed, and you have to question their professional competence or indeed whether they had their own agenda.
So being paid for unnecessary PR, and given access to data they don’t require.
The most remarkable thing about the remaining Tory supporters on this forum is that the party is able to continually fool them all the time and they continually fall for it.
She teaches in a Tory-voting borough with one of the lowest percentages of graduates in the country. Wonder what the algorithm did to them.
The online teaching resources need to be beefed up now in anticipation of this happening because it will happen in a significant number of educational establishments. It is just inevitable.
But the whole thing is a mess and condemnation should be across the UK to the quangos and politicians.
We had the ridiculous situation here in Wales that Drakeford only followed England after their announcement admitting they were really not for the change
Watching Sky and BBC they are increasingly becoming the English broadcasting corporation virtually ignoring Wales
Lot of sympathy here. Younger Grandson is in the same academic year. Takes A levels in June 2021.
Winston Churchill
A Life in the News
Richard Toye
Traces Churchill's life in the news from cradle to grave, showing how tensions between tradition and novelty played into his constantly evolving media image
Drawing on a massive amount of media coverage of Churchill, much of it previously forgotten, and explores ordinary people's reactions to news coverage of Churchill
A tale of tight deadlines, off-the-record briefings and smoke-filled newsrooms, of wartime summits that were turned into stage-managed global media events
A story of rapidly changing technology, in which the telegraph, the telephone, radio, newsreel and (to a lesser extent) television all played their parts
Dealing with themes of censorship and propaganda, the book is of compelling relevance in the era of 'fake news'
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/winston-churchill-9780198803980
I said the issues would be resolved, just like it was in Scotland.
The general cap on places has been lifted already and was instantly, just like it was in Scotland.
There is a specific and separate cap on Medicine, the government have already said they're urgently working with the sector to resolve it.
So exactly as I said would happen.
You're just saying that to make a political point.
The obvious truth, the elephant in the room, is that with no schools since March and no exams there is insufficient information to assess students accurately because vast amounts of relevant data are missing. The only thing you can be sure of it that you cannot know to whom to mistakes have been made, either under the original scheme or the hasty upgrade revision.
What should have happened (IMHO and imperfect) is that Years 11 and 13 should have been told that they will face exams, even if they are delayed a few weeks, so crack on with working.
The medicine restrictions are a separate issue from the funding restrictions. You are conflating two separate issues.
If someone had the sense to roll out on a mass scale the saliva test just approved by the FDA in the US, which is free to copy, can be run by any lab the same day, only costs around £5 a time, and can be pooled, it could be done in comparative safety.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-issues-emergency-use-authorization-yale-school-public-health
Not even close to being up to the job.
Admittedly you have to wait a couple of days for it to clear though.
Though I think the stated £50 000 per annum cost of a Medical School place is greatly exagerrated. The way to progress in Academia does not involve teaching undergraduates, it is all about research and grants. A little rebalancing on this is way overdue, most medical education comes from NHS frontoviks like yours truly.
We cannot allow this situation to arise again
Even large amounts, ie 50K , if you have informed bank clear in a couple of hours.
I expect conservative backbenchers are becoming increasingly worried by the unsuitability of Boris in this crisis and the failure of his ministers
If I was a conservative mp I would already have written my letter to the 1922 and ready to send it in in the early new year
Either corruption or extreme incompetence.
If you do you're either ignorant or naive.
I predict we will have another relaunch and he announces he's getting a grip and back on top of things in early September.
He is currently issuing laptops to all the staff and students for the new term in September with online learning and teaching becoming very much the day to day activity for the students. He has of course worked full time and more throughout this crisis putting in these changes
The problem is that the public sector do not seem to be anywhere near this level of development and maybe the question should be why not. Of course it would require billions in investment but the way covid has fundamentally changed everything that investment should be found