Education secretary @GavinWilliamson now delivering a statement in the Commons on plans for bringing children back to school. Stay tuned for live updates.

The government's response is proportionate to the risk at hand, @GavinWilliamson says.
.@GavinWilliamson says in a small number of areas where infection rates are highest, only vulnerable pupils and children of key workers will attend primary school face-to-face. This is NOT all Tier 4 areas. The overwhelming majority of primaries will open as planned on Monday.
For secondary schools, it will be a staggered start, says @GavinWilliamson – with staff testing starting from 4 January, exam years returning on 11 January and everyone back in by 18 January
In particularly hard-hit areas, @GavinWilliamson says that exam year students, as well as vulnerable students and children of key workers, will still attend secondary schools in person, with all other classes taking place remotely
.@KateGreenSU says that the government has lost control of the virus and it is now losing control of children's education…it is clear its plans have failed
.@KateGreenSU going in on the detail of the government's plans for schools – asking for data on schools, laptop rollout and how the government plans to support working parents who now have unexpected childcare issues
.@KateGreenSU also asking about those students taking exams (eg, BTECs) over the next few weeks, and what the DfE plans to do to make sure these exams are fair
It appears @GavinWilliamson and @KateGreenSU are locked in a battle to see who can thank teachers the most on behalf of their respective sides
.@GavinWilliamson declines to outline the advice given to the government by Sage, saying only that Sage will publish its findings "soon"
.@halfon4harlowMP says he has "real worries" about the impacts of closures of schools on vulnerable students and families and asks what risk assessments have been carried out – and asks for school and college staff to be put at the front of the queue for vaccinations
.@GavinWilliamson says that the government will do everything it can to avoid "kneejerk reactions" in closing schools
.@GavinWilliamson doesn't address the call to put school and college staff at the front of the queue for vaccinations
GCSE and A-level exams will go ahead as planned, pledges @GavinWilliamson
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk, Conservative) reiterates @halfon4harlowMP's calls for school and college staff to be prioritised for vaccinations
.@GavinWilliamson says that vaccination decisions cover a "whole wealth of areas", and the most clinically vulnerable are being prioritised – once through that "clinical need", decisions over vaccinating teachers and school staff can be made
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington, Labour) raises heads' anger over the government's detail-light pre-Christmas announcement on testing in schools – calls again for vaccinations for front-line teachers and asks about support for vocational exams
.@GavinWilliamson says on vaccinations that once the vulnerable groups are worked through, he hopes school staff are looked at to ensure "they are high up on the list"
.@YvetteCooperMP uses a local college to illustrate the point that schools and colleges are currently having to plan for mass testing without knowing what financial and practical support they will be receiving to help them carry out said testing
.@GavinWilliamson says the details are readily available
We will be guided by the public health advice on a local basis, says @GavinWilliamson in response to a question on how long these measures will be in place

More from Education

Working on a newsletter edition about deliberate practice.

Deliberate practice is crucial if you want to reach expert level in any skill, but what is it, and how can it help you learn more precisely?

A thread based on @augustbradley's conversation with the late Anders Ericsson.

You can find my complete notes from the conversation in my public Roam graph:
https://t.co/Z5bXHsg3oc

The entire conversation is on

The 10,000-hour 'rule' was based on Ericsson's research, but simple practice is not enough for mastery.

We need teachers and coaches to give us feedback on how we're doing to adjust our actions effectively. Technology can help us by providing short feedback loops.

There's purposeful and deliberate practice.

In purposeful practice, you gain breakthroughs by trying out different techniques you find on your own.

In deliberate practice, an expert tells you what to improve on and how to do it, and then you do that (while getting feedback).

It's possible to come to powerful techniques through purposeful practice, but it's always a gamble.

Deliberate practice is possible with a map of the domain and a recommended way to move through it. This makes success more likely.
Last month I presented seven sentences in seven different languages, all written in a form of the Chinese-character script. The challenge was to identify the languages and, if possible, provide a


Here again are those seven sentences:

1) 他的剑从船上掉到河里去
2) 於世𡗉番𧡊哭唭𢆥尼歲㐌外四𨑮
3) 入良沙寢矣見昆腳烏伊四是良羅
4) 佢而家喺邊喥呀
5) 夜久毛多都伊豆毛夜幣賀岐都麻碁微爾夜幣賀岐都久流曾能夜幣賀岐袁
6) 其劍自舟中墜於水
7) 今天愛晚特語兔吃二魚佛午飯

Six of those seven sentences are historically attested. One is not: I invented #7. I’m going to dive into an exploration of that seventh sentence in today’s thread.

Sentence #7 is an English-language sentence written sinographically — that is, using graphs that originate in the Chinese script. I didn’t do this for fun (even though it is fun), or as a proposal for a new way to write


I did it as a thought experiment. Why? Because thinking about how the modern Chinese script might be adapted to write modern English can give us valuable insights into historical instances of script borrowing, like those that took place centuries ago in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.
The outrage is not that she fit better. The outrage is that she stated very firmly on national television with no caveat, that there are no conditions not improved by exercise. Many people with viral sequelae have been saying for years that exercise has made them more disabled 1/


And the new draft NICE guidelines for ME/CFS which often has a viral onset specifically say that ME/CFS patients shouldn't do graded exercise. Clare is fully aware of this but still made a sweeping and very firm statement that all conditions are improved by exercise. This 2/

was an active dismissal of the lived experience of hundreds of thousands of patients with viral sequelae. Yes, exercise does help so many conditions. Yes, a very small number of people with an ME/CFS diagnosis are helped by exercise. But the vast majority of people with ME, a 3/

a quintessential post-viral condition, are made worse by exercise. Many have been left wheelchair dependent of bedbound by graded exercise therapy when they could walk before. To dismiss the lived experience of these patients with such a sweeping statement is unethical and 4/

unsafe. Clare has every right to her lived experience. But she can't, and you can't justifiably speak out on favour of listening to lived experience but cherry pick the lived experiences you are going to listen to. Why are the lived experiences of most people with ME dismissed?

You May Also Like