More study aids and generous grade boundaries for 2021's exams will be welcomed by many teachers and students. But doesn't address a fundamental problem of the next exam season: equity. Because there's great variation in how different schools have been affected by self-isolation.

Let's take the most recent attendance stats which I still don't think have really registered.

Most recent data- attendance rate across England of 83%

In secondary schools it's 78% (!)

So more than 1 in 5 secondary pupils are off school, largely for Covid related reasons.
But that’s just an average. Some schools’ attendance are at levels where they can’t really function, or certainly provide the quality of education they normally do.

Teachers’ are split between trying to run online lessons and those in schools.

Whole year groups are off.
Some students are in isolation, return to school and within days are in isolation again.

As I’ve reported before, IT provision is still patchy. Lots of reports of kids not doing work at home either because they get of the swing of it or they don’t have the IT resources.
And that’s before we get on to staff isolation, which is also proving a nightmare in many places.

In other words, you have to have everything go right for your education not to be impacted by Covid right now. And that’s affecting some places more than others.
So question is, is it far for a student in Cornwall say, who has had little to no disruption to their education since September to be given the same dispensations as one in Hull whose school may have been closed for a period?
There is no easy answer to this- Gavin Williamson has said that the the DfE is looking for ways to address the equity issue. But it’s a profound challenge. As I’ve said, I’m not sure it’s really registered the extent to which many schools are really, really struggling.
NB bear in mind this is also a cohort who missed months of their education in the first half of 2020. Many are still reporting behavioural issues and teachers tell me some are still far, far behind where we would expect. That’s the context they’re dealing with.
For example, Beacon Hill Academy in Dudley where Ive been filming today: the whole of Y7 and Y8 are in self isolation and will have been for two weeks. At one point much of the senior staff were off too. Some kids having to have repeated bouts of isolation.

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Some quick thoughts on what we just saw

Firstly hardly a unique insight but hard to overstimate the difference between the two last inaugurals. America has meandered sharply along its political arc.

Biden's rhetoric reached high. Every sentence seemed purposefully...


...constructed to negate every political and personal characteristic of his predecessor.

And insofar as he's not Trump, that he does accept, cherish and understand democratic norms, institutions and conventions in a way that Trump never could, Biden will make a real difference.

He will change the tone and tenor of politics, not only in America but across the West. As I've said before, just replacing Trump is a substantial victory for him and will earn him praise from historians.

But that aura will disappear quickly. A governing project it will not make

But how much praise he receives and stature conferred by posterity will depend on what happens next.

Because the big overarching question for me, watching this, is which of those two inaugurals, Trump or Biden's, is going to seem unusual in the future.

The relief that many are feeling is predicated on a type of politics ending. But it is at least as possible that it is Biden ..not Trump who is the last gasp of something. Is it Trump who is the dying embers of a dying, increasingly powerless old white America...

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(1) Kushner is worth $324 million.
(2) Since 2016, Kushner has connived, with Saudi help, to force the Qataris (literally at a ship's gunpoint) to "loan" him $900 million.
(3) This is consistent with the Steele dossier.
(4) Kushner is unlikely to ever have to pay the "loan" back.


2/ So as you read about his tax practices, you should take from it that it's practices of this sort that ensure that he's able to extort money from foreign governments while Trump is POTUS without ever having to pay the money back. It also explains why he's in the Saudis' pocket.

3/ It's why the Saudis *say* he's in their pocket. It's why emoluments and federal bribery statutes matter. It's why Kushner was talking to the Saudi Crown Prince the day before the murdered Washington Post journalist was taken. It's why the Trump administration now does nothing.
"I really want to break into Product Management"

make products.

"If only someone would tell me how I can get a startup to notice me."

Make Products.

"I guess it's impossible and I'll never break into the industry."

MAKE PRODUCTS.

Courtesy of @edbrisson's wonderful thread on breaking into comics –
https://t.co/TgNblNSCBj – here is why the same applies to Product Management, too.


There is no better way of learning the craft of product, or proving your potential to employers, than just doing it.

You do not need anybody's permission. We don't have diplomas, nor doctorates. We can barely agree on a single standard of what a Product Manager is supposed to do.

But – there is at least one blindingly obvious industry consensus – a Product Manager makes Products.

And they don't need to be kept at the exact right temperature, given endless resource, or carefully protected in order to do this.

They find their own way.