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The Department for Education was premature in cancelling next summer’s exams, the head of a schools trust argues in a piece for Schools Week, in which he calls for a reversal of that decision.
Stuart Lock, the head of Advantage Schools trust in Bedford, which runs a primary and secondary school, writes that 12 months months from now, “the anti-exam voice will only be louder, and the consequences even more severe for young people if it is successful.” He says, however:
But this is a Department for Education that has made a habit of changing their minds. Doing it again on this might be politically unpalatable, but it wouldn’t even be in the top 10 unpalatable things that have happened this week. In my view, this is one decision they should rescind.
To many Conservative MPs, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is the real opposition leader these days, writes Katy Balls in an interesting Spectator column today which touches on the the implications for politics after Covid-19.
Until the pandemic, opinion polls showed little change in appetite for Scottish independence. But since then, support for separation has surged.
It’s not that the Scottish government has managed the crisis well — an Imperial College study found that Scotland along with England had among the highest rates of death from all causes in the first wave of the pandemic — but politically, Sturgeon’s handling has been deft.
