Kristina Murkett

After 13 years in power, the Conservatives have decided to rebrand themselves as the ‘party of change’. Today, Rishi Sunak announced that the Tories will ban smoking for the next generation, scrap a significant portion of HS2, and abolish A-levels and T-levels in favour of new ‘Advanced British Standards’. Rishi Sunak is no longer ‘Inaction Man’, but ‘Over-reaction Man’ While it is encouraging to see the government finally being proactive rather than reactive on education policy, the government will have to put its money where its mouth is if it wants to prove that this is more than a headline-grabbing pre-election gimmick.

Today Labour have confirmed that they will impose VAT on private schools in its first year of power if it wins the next general election, rather than phasing in new charges over several academic years. In order to improve state education, Labour needs to raise money from somewhere, and private schools are an easy ideological target. The problem is that no one is exactly sure how much money the VAT will actually raise: Keir Starmer has estimated £1.7 billion, but schools will be able to offset certain costs against the VAT (for example, utility bills and building projects).

Teacher recruitment levels are in crisis, and have been for some time. Only half the number of secondary teachers needed for this academic year have actually been recruited, according to figures obtained by the National Education Union (NEU) and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT). Teacher vacancies have doubled since the start of the pandemic, while one in five teachers who qualified in 2020 have already quit; even the previously reliable juggernaut Teach First has been branded ‘inadequate’ over its ability to recruit by the Department for Education. What's more, the shortage of male teachers has led to a worrying gender imbalance.

Pupils are due to head back to school over the coming days, but now it seems that some of them might not. Yesterday, the government told schools to prepare evacuation plans for buildings made with RAAC concrete. This morning, schools were instructed to close these buildings altogether. This has caused immense disruption to at least 156 schools who now have to arrange alternative provision a mere couple of days, or in some cases, hours, before their students were due to crowd their corridors. To add insult to injury, schools will have to pay for these new measures themselves, and some parents have already been warned that disruption may last until 2025.

August always means an anxious wait for results days, but this year pupils will be feeling particularly apprehensive. England’s exams regulator, Ofqual, has said that national results will be lower than last year’s and are expected to be similar to those before Covid. Some reports estimate that around 50,000 A-level students will therefore miss out on getting the A* and A grades they could have expected if they took their exams last year. They will also face intense competition for top university places given the record numbers of international students applying too. Readjusting after the grade inflation of the pandemic was always going to be painful. In 2019, 25.

Rishi Sunak is a big fan of a ‘crack down’. He has previously vowed to crack down on migration, anti-social behaviour and climate protests. ‘Rip off’ university courses that ‘don’t offer the prospect of a decent job at the end of it' are the PM's latest target. But Sunak’s tough talk and aggressive rhetoric smacks of over-compensating for any lack of real detail. Politicians love to poke fun at ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees, but rarely define what they actually mean. In an interview on Good Morning Britain, higher education minister Robert Halfon couldn’t name a single degree, salary threshold or ‘good job’ against which the criteria for a ‘Mickey Mouse’ degree could be set.

One of the most wonderful things about walking around Oxford at this time of year is seeing hordes of young people celebrating the end of exams: finals, A-levels. GCSEs. Hundreds of miles north in Scotland, younger students may soon have another reason to celebrate altogether: the end of National 5 qualifications. An imminent review of secondary Scottish assessment is widely anticipated to recommend ditching exams for 15 and 16 year olds, and replacing National 5 qualifications (the Scottish equivalent to GCSEs) with a new system. Under the new proposals, students would be judged on coursework alongside a Scottish ‘diploma’ which recognises extra-curricular activities, sport and volunteering.

Something troubling is happening in Britain’s schools. This week, the government released its findings from the first national survey into pupil behaviour in classrooms. The results are a hard lesson to learn. But, as a teacher who has witnessed chairs being thrown and pupils urinating on teachers’ cars, it doesn’t come as a surprise. Over 40 per cent of students say that they feel unsafe each week because of poor behaviour, according to the survey. Students have the lowest perception of how well behaviour is going in school. This suggests that teachers and school leaders have normalised lower standards and expectations, to the point that roughly six weeks of lesson time is lost due to disruption a year. Poor behaviour also seems to have worsened in recent years.

In one particularly excruciating scene in The Office, manager David Brent tells everyone that they are about to lose their jobs, but ‘the good news is I’ve been promoted’. When challenged, he says, ‘Well I couldn’t come out and say I’ve got some bad news and some irrelevant news.’ A similar exchange seems to have just happened with Rishi rather than Ricky. The bad news is that the NHS is in crisis, with up to 500 people dying a week due to delays in emergency care and one in three ambulances waiting over an hour to hand over patients. The ‘good’ news though is that Sunak, after almost two months of silence, has announced that he wants all students to study maths up until 18. The strange and surreal timing aside, Sunak’s policy simply doesn’t add up.

In his book The Five Basic Plots, Christopher Booker outlines five stages of tragedy: anticipation, dream, frustration, nightmare, destruction. So far Liz Truss has completed four of these. Tory party members, like Macbeth’s witches, hailed Liz Truss as ruler of a new low-tax, pro-growth era. She rose to the top, like Macbeth, in a triumph of ambition over ability, but took his advice with her mini-Budget (‘if it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly’) a little too literally. Frustrated by the fates of the markets, Truss is now surely in her nightmare stage: haunted, hunted, hiding (although apparently not under a desk).

Tory MP Robert Halfon is right to say that the underachievement of white working-class students is a ‘major social injustice’. He is also correct to call for ‘a proper funding settlement’ so that we have an ‘education system fit for purpose’. But this much-needed debate has been overshadowed by a red herring in the Education committee's report: the use of the term ‘white privilege’. The report claims that the use of such phrases may have contributed to the neglect of disadvantaged white kids. Of course, as Halfon says, ‘it is wrong to tell a white disadvantaged family that they are white privileged even though they may come from a very poor background and may be struggling’.

India's Covid situation is dire: hospitals have run out of beds (some hospitals are treating patients in cars), people are turning to the black market for drugs and oxygen cylinders, and mass cremations are taking place in car parks. The official daily death toll is around 2000, but the likely reality is much, much higher. Britain has offered to help by sending 600 pieces of medical equipment to support the country in its Covid crisis. But the reality is that our country could do much more to help its ally than just offer a token shipment of supplies. The UK continues to block a patent waiver designed to boost the global production of Covid vaccines.

Students are the forgotten victims of lockdown. Having worked hard to achieve their grades, undergraduates have been consigned to their bedrooms to learn online. There's been no socialising, freshers fun or the chance to make new friends. The only thing that has been the same for the Covid class of 2021 are sky high fees. Finally, the government has announced that all university students will be able to return from the 17 May. While some undergraduates may be relieved to get some much-needed clarity, most will be deeply, deeply frustrated. Many students are asking why universities did not open again when schools did.

After a year in which young people have lost their jobs, been denied time in the classroom and at university and not been allowed to see their friends, could they now be penalised again? Boris Johnson said we 'have to be very careful how you handle this and don't start a system that is discriminatory' when vaccine passports, or 'Covid status certification', were raised at a briefing this week. Yet it's hard to imagine a more grossly unfair, discriminatory system than introducing vaccine passports before young people have the opportunity to be vaccinated. Young people have sacrificed so much for a disease that they are relatively invulnerable to.

Angela Merkel did something remarkable this week: she said sorry. Having announced an Easter lockdown in Germany, the Chancellor partly reversed her decision. ‘This mistake is my mistake alone,’ she said, urging ‘all citizens to forgive’ her. Was this a particularly groundbreaking speech? Perhaps not. But one thing is clear: it is exceptionally rare to hear a politician admit blame and take responsibility so explicitly, unconditionally and openly. And when it does happen, it is more often than not from a woman. Last summer, Nicola Sturgeon apologised to pupils over the controversial exam results in a similar fashion to Merkel: ‘Despite our best intentions, I do acknowledge that we did not get this right and I'm sorry for that.