Three million of them are unlikely to pitch up here, but government must plan for all eventualities – and support for its plan wouldn’t survive a mass influx.
Never underestimate the power of Labour. Its message of helping the underdog and the poor is enduring, still popular and extremely potent.
The Education Endowment Foundation estimates that ten years of progress in closing the attainment gap has been reversed by school closures.
Parents need to be persuaded to send their children back to school – and until that happens life chances will be blighted and economic growth lessened.
Making unused council building space available will allow greater space for pupils to be educated safely.
A number of highly-equipped educational establishments will be out of use until the next academic year. We should use them.
The blue share in the poll of polls hit 43 per cent on June 2 and hasn’t moved the best part of a month later.
Johnson has fewer than three months in which to move public opinion – the key to getting schools moving again.
Plus: If only the Remainers had behaved like Rashford. And: the lesson I draw from Twitter – “Immer mit der Ruhe”
The battle to re-open state schools rages across the UK. Also: Mohammed Asghar, Conservative member of the Welsh Assembly, passed away this week.
The PM crashed about in a manner which recalled the short, brilliant, astonishingly abusive career of Lord Randolph Churchill.
“Last week I asked him whether he would say publicly that schools are safe to go back to – he hummed and he hawed.”
Plus: vision from the top for left-behind pupils, a National Education Broadcasting Service, and Alan Turing summer schools.
Neither the Covid-19 recovery plan nor SAGE’s minutes indicate that a formal “health cost-benefit analysis” has been done. We need one.
In that sense, his speech could easily have been given by a much more fitting figure for the Ditchley Foundation: Tony Blair.