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      in US Politics

      Biden is already backtracking on his promises to provide student debt relief | Astra Taylor

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      At his recent town hall, Joe Biden made a series of convoluted and condescending comments about American student debt. His remarks cast doubt on his ability, or willingness, to confront this country’s ballooning student loan crisis. Within hours, #cancelstudentdebt was trending on Twitter.Biden’s rambling justification of the status quo was peppered with straw men, invocations of false scarcity and non-solutions. He pitted working-class Americans against each other, implying that people who attend private schools aren’t worthy of relief, as though poor students don’t also attend such schools. He said that money would be better spent on early childhood education instead of debt cancellation, as if educators aren’t themselves drowning in student debt, and as if we can’t address both concerns at once. He suggested relying on parents or selling a home at a profit to settle your debt, a luxury those without intergenerational wealth or property cannot afford. And he touted various programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), that have totally failed borrowers: over 95% of PSLF applicants have been denied.In contrast to Biden’s smug comments, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley recently revealed that she defaulted on her student loans. Similarly, at a recent Debt Collective event, congressional hopeful Nina Turner said that she and her son owe a combined $100,000. Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has, of course, proudly confessed to being in debt, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said that becoming a congressperson was easier than paying off her debt. Philadelphia councilmember Kendra Brooks (who is planning to introduce a city resolution calling on the Biden administration to cancel all student debt) has also spoken out about her own struggles as a borrower. Their experience and candor – and commitment to real solutions including cancellation – demonstrate why we need debtors, not millionaires, in our public offices.Let’s be clear about another thing. Biden absolutely has the legal authority to use executive power to cancel all federal student debt. Congress granted this authority decades ago as part of the Higher Education Act. It’s even been put to the test: in response to the Covid pandemic, Donald Trump and his former education secretary, Betsy DeVos, used that authority three times to suspend payments and student loan interest.As he rambled on, Biden gave the distinct impression that he preferred not to have the power to do so. That way he could blame Congress should his campaign promises go unkept. (The day after the town hall, Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, attempted to clarify her boss’s remarks about whether he will use executive authority to cancel student debt. She stated that the administration was still considering the possibility.)Adding to the confusion, Biden seemed unable to keep his own campaign pledges straight, muddling his student debt cancellation proposals. For the record, he campaigned on two distinct planks. One: “immediate” cancellation of $10,000 for every borrower as a form of Covid relief. Two: the cancellation of all undergraduate student loans for debt-holders who attended public universities and HBCUs and who earn up to $125,000 a year. Keeping these two promises is the absolute minimum the Biden administration needs to do to keep the public’s trust.But the Biden administration should, and can, do much more. Biden should cancel all student debt using executive authority. It is the simplest way the new administration can help tens of millions of people who are being crushed by the double whammy of unpayable loans and an economy-destroying pandemic.Yet, to date, all the Biden administration has done for this country’s 45 million student debtors is extend Trump and DeVos’s federal student loan payment suspension. Continuing a flawed Republican policy is hardly a progressive victory – especially not for the 8 million FFEL borrowers who are unconscionably left out of the moratorium.Biden owes this country debt relief not only because he campaigned on it, but because he helped cause the problem. A former senator from Delaware, the credit card capital of the world, he spent decades carrying water for financial interests and expanding access to student loans while limiting borrower protections.Biden’s brand is empath-in-chief, but on student debt he is alarmingly out of touchBiden’s record shows that he won’t address the problem without being pushed. Indeed, the fact that the president has embraced debt cancellation at all (however inadequate his proposals) is testament to ongoing grassroots efforts. The Debt Collective, a group I organize with, has been pushing for student debt abolition and free public college for nearly a decade. On 21 January, we launched the Biden Jubilee 100 – 100 borrowers on debt strike demanding full cancellation within the administration’s first hundred days. A growing list of senators and congresspeople have signed on to resolutions calling on Biden to cancel $50,000 a borrower using executive authority. (It’s worth noting that the $50,000 figure is based on outdated research. After three years of rapidly rising debt loads, the scholars behind it now recommend $75,000 of cancellation.) A growing chorus of voices from across the country and a range of backgrounds are shouting in unison: cancel student debt.Biden’s brand is empath-in-chief, but on student debt he is alarmingly out of touch. The president has shared that his own children borrowed for college and noted that he was the “poorest man in Congress” – meaning the poorest man in a body of millionaires. He didn’t question the ease with which his well-connected kids got well-compensated jobs enabling them to repay their loans, nor mention that people his age were able to go to college without being burdened by a mountain of debt. All people want today is the same opportunity that Biden and his peers had.Instead of acknowledging this generational disparity, Biden reiterated a common criticism of more generous forms of student debt cancellation – that it would help the privileged, specifically the minuscule subset of debt-holders who attended the Ivy League. But as Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response: “Very wealthy people already have a student loan forgiveness program. It’s called their parents.” As things stand, poor and working people typically pay more for the same degrees than their affluent counterparts due to years or decades of monthly payments and accumulating interest. Our debt-financed higher education system is a tax on poor people who dare pursue a better life.Imagine if, instead of defending the status quo, Biden used his platform to articulate the social benefits of cancelling student debt. He could have said that cancelling student debt will support 45 million Americans and provide an estimated trillion-dollar economic boost over the next decade and create millions of desperately needed jobs. He could have spoken about canceling student debt as a way to help close the racial wealth gap, acknowledging that Black borrowers are the most burdened, or talked about how education should be free and accessible to all if we want to expand opportunity and deepen democracy. He could have acknowledged that cancellation will help struggling seniors, especially those having their social security checks garnished because of student loan defaults. He could have mentioned that debt cancellation is popular, even among many Republicans, and that eliminating it will help his party stay in power.He didn’t say any of that, and so we have to say it. Debtors have to get organized, connecting online and protesting in the streets. We live in a period of intersecting crises. Some of them are very difficult to solve. But cancelling student debt is easy. By refusing to act, the president and his administration are choosing to perpetuate a system that causes profound, pointless, and preventable harm.Astra Taylor is the author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, and an organizer with the Debt Collective More

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      in UK Politics

      English schools face tighter mask rules when pupils return

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      As pressure mounts on the government to get pupils back into classrooms in England, rules on wearing face masks in school will be tightened and mass rapid testing could be rolled out after the planned reopening next month, it has been reported.Under the new plans, it will become mandatory for pupils to wear masks outside classroom bubbles in secondary schools whenever it is not possible to practice social distancing, according The Guardian.Until now, the decision as to whether or not students wear face masks in communal areas in schools and colleges has been left up to head teachers, with current guidance stating that the government does not recommend that face coverings are necessary in education settings.The government is also reportedly hoping to manage outbreaks of Covid-19 by deploying repeat lateral flow tests for pupils to be conducted in school when they return, before switching to home tests.TheTelegraph reports that parents will be asked to administer lateral flow tests on their children at home twice a week during term time, to minimise the chances of an outbreak spreading quickly throughout a school.Secondary schools will reportedly be allowed to stagger the return of some year groups to allow for every pupil to be tested when they arrive at school.Challenged on the report, the care minister Helen Whately told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there is “work in progress”, adding: “I’m not going to get drawn into that.””There is work in progress looking at how testing can support schools to come back.”There’s already testing going on in schools, where you have children of key workers and teachers in schools at the moment, because schools aren’t completely closed, and there is work going on at the moment about the details of the return to schools, and there will be more said about that next week.”The Department for Education (DfE) is also reportedly planning to launch a PR campaign to shore up parents’ confidence in school safety ahead of 8 March, which is when Boris Johnson told MPs the government hopes to start reopening English schools.A report by The Guardian said that a series of announcements on schools will be made next week, starting with Mr Johnson’s blueprint to relaxing lockdown restrictions on Monday, followed by details on catch-up, assessments in the coming summer, and coronavirus testing.The prime minister cautioned that the date for reopening schools in England is dependent on a number of factors, including the rate of vaccination amongst priority groups. A final decision on the issue is not expected until Friday at the earliest.School leaders are due to hold talks with DfE on Thursday and are expected to call for a phased approach to reopening schools rather than a “big bang” return that would see 10 million students and staff heading back into the classroom on the same day.Geogg Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College leaders, said it was “important that the full reopening of schools doesn’t end up triggering another spike in infection rates and another lockdown”, which he said would be a “disaster”.“We need to remember that fully reopening schools brings into circulation nearly 10 million pupils and staff, which is not far short of a fifth of the population in England. It isn’t just the mixing in school that is the issue, but the potential for increased risk on the way to and from school and outside the school gates,” he told The Guardian.A spokesperson for DfE said in a statement: “The prime minister is due to set out plans for schools reopening on 22 February, and it is hoped pupils will return from 8 March.“Schools remain open to vulnerable children and children of critical workers, but if critical workers can work from home and look after their children at the same time then they should do so.” More

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      in UK Politics

      University of Manchester ends research project with Chinese firm over alleged links to Uighur persecution

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      The University of Manchester has terminated a research project with a state-owned Chinese company with alleged links to human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims.It comes after a parliamentary committee accused China Electronics Technology Group (CETC) of providing technology and infrastructure used in the persecution of the ethnic minority group.Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, had written to the university over its Department of Physics and Astronomy’s research partnership with the company.“According to credible reports from both Human Rights Watch and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, CETC is one of the main architects of the Chinese government’s surveillance state in Xinjiang, China, providing both technology and infrastructure that is being used for the identity-based persecution of more than one million people, predominantly Uyghur Muslims,” the MP said in his letter.The Chinese government has been accused of widespread abuse in the northwestern Xinjiang province, including mass internment, slave labour and allegations of forced sterilisation.China at first denied the existence of the internment areas. It later acknowledged them, but denied any abuses and says the steps it has taken are necessary to combat terrorism and a separatist movement.The Foreign Affairs Committee is attempting to determine the extent of British involvement with organisations who are implicated in the situation as part of an inquiry.In his letter, the chair asked the University of Manchester about its partnership with CETC, including whether staff had raised concerns and the university knew about alleged links with Uighur persecution when the relationship was agreed.Professor Martin Schroder, the university’s vice-president and dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, said the institution has “now taken steps to terminate the current agreement” with CETC while it assesses the relationship.He said the university had already been reviewing the relationship, after a licence application for a joint project was rejected.“I also confirm that, as far as I am aware, the university had no prior knowledge of any credible reports stated in your letter, or from any other source, linking CETC’s technology with the persecution of Uyghur Muslims. Your letter is the first to do so,” he told the committee in a letter. He added: “I confirm that as I am aware no members of staff at the University have raised concerns about the collaboration with CETC38, and no desires have been expressed or steps taken by the University or CETC38 to develop collaboration between these two organisations in the areas of artificial intelligence, big data or advanced materials.”Mr Tugendhat said he was “pleased” that the university “has decided to suspend its relationship with CETC” following the committee’s intervention.  “Although we welcome the university’s move to withdraw from any further projects with CETC, it is surprising that the university had not been made aware that CETC’s technology was being used to aid the atrocities taking place in Xinjiang detention camps. Our letter was apparently the first they knew of it,” the Tory MP said.  He added: “It remains imperative that British institutions, educational and otherwise, are fully informed of who it is they are working and sharing research with.“A lack of curiosity could inadvertently lead to some of our most well-respected businesses and universities entering into a relationship which – inadvertently or otherwise – sees them complicit in the systematic abuse of the human rights of the Uyghurs and other minority groups.”The university said their research collaboration with CETC aimed to “significantly advance the field of radio astronomy”.“The projects worked towards an objective of disseminating research results in the public domain through publication in academic journals and as is standard in collaborative research projects, results of the work undertaken were shared between the parties in accordance with the terms of the agreement,” Mr Schroder said in his letter to the commitee.They had already completed one project, had a licence application rejected for a second, and have now withdrawn a third application for a project, he said.A University of Manchester spokesperson said: “The University is reviewing its collaboration with China Electronics Technology Group Co. Ltd (CETC38) following the rejection of a licence application by the government’s Export Control Joint Unit (ECJU) in relation to a specific project with the company.“This took place in January and predates any correspondence with the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Since then, we have taken steps to terminate the current agreement with CETC38 whilst assessing the relationship.”The spokesperson said the university had recently undertaken more work to address “the potentially complex risks and issues” arising from international research partnerships. “One of the aims is to provide a strengthened degree of assurance about potential new research partners with the University’s guiding principles, values, missions and goals,” they said. Additional reporting by agencies More

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      in UK Politics

      Around 20,000 young people still unable to access online learning in Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham says

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      The mayor said this was “simply not good enough” as he called for the government to ensure all students out of school have access to a device.Schools moved online in early January to all pupils except vulnerable and key worker children due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Speaking about uncertainty over when all children will be allowed back to school, the Greater Manchester mayor said: “If we can’t give schools a start date, they have to put in place the equipment to get kids online.”“It is just not good enough to do this half-hearted job they have done so far.”Mr Burnham said: “I understand why you can’t set a date, but for goodness sake, you have to put in place an arrangement that allows every child to learn.”We estimate that in Greater Manchester there are around 20,000 young people who are out of school and do not have online access and that simply isn’t good enough.”The government laptop scheme – which has faced criticism over delays and device quality – is providing devices for disadvantaged children in certain year groups who do not have access to a device at home and whose face-to-face education has been disrupted. The government has committed to giving 1.3 million laptops and tablets to schools to support pupils in need, with around 800,000 of these delivered by mid-January.After the total figure pledged rose by 300,000 earlier this month, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said it was “pretty poor that nearly a year after this crisis began we are only now inching up to the number of devices that are needed”.According to estimates from Ofcom, between 1.14 million and 1.78 million children in the UK (9%) do not have home access to a laptop, desktop or tablet, and that more than 880,000 children live in a household with only a mobile internet connection.In the wake of lockdown and the majority of pupils moving to remote learning, tech companies have been urged to do more to support disadvantaged families who lack access to a reliable internet connection and network operators moved to offer free mobile data to those who need it.A government spokesperson said: “We are fully committed to reopening schools as soon as the public health picture allows, and right through the pandemic have taken every step to ensure schools stayed open as long as they could.“We will set out plans for schools, parents and pupils as soon as possible, providing as much notice as we can.” More

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      in World Politics

      Welcome to The Economist’s Technological Idealism

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      Every publication has a worldview. Each cultivates a style of thought, ideology or philosophy designed to comfort the expectations of its readers and to confirm a shared way of perceiving the world around them. Even Fair Observer has a worldview, in which, thanks to the diversity of its contributors, every topic deserves to be made visible from multiple angles. Rather than emphasizing ideology, such a worldview places a quintessential value on human perception and experience.

      Traditional media companies profile their readership and pitch their offering to their target market’s preferences. This often becomes its central activity. Reporting the news and informing the public becomes secondary to using news reporting to validate a worldview that may not be explicitly declared. Some media outlets reveal their bias, while others masquerade it and claim to be objective. The Daily Devil’s Dictionary has frequently highlighted the bias of newspapers like The New York Times that claim to be objective but consistently impose their worldview. In contrast, The Economist, founded in 1843, has, throughout its history, prominently put its liberal — and now neoliberal — worldview on public display. 

      Zambia Is The Economist’s Damsel in Distress

      READ MORE

      Many of The Economist’s articles are designed to influence both public opinion and public policy. One that appeared at the end of last week exemplifies the practice, advertising its worldview. It could be labeled “liberal technological optimism.” The title of the article sets the tone: “The new era of innovation — Why a dawn of technological optimism is breaking.” The byline indicates the author: Admin. In other words, this is a direct expression of the journal’s worldview.

      The article begins by citing what it assesses as the trend of pessimism that has dominated the economy over the past decade. The text quickly focuses on the optimism announced in the title. And this isn’t just any optimism, but an extreme form of joyous optimism that reflects a Whiggish neoliberal worldview. The “dawn” cliché makes it clear that it is all about the hope of emerging from a dark, ominous night into the cheer of a bright morning with the promise of technological bliss. Central to the rhetoric is the idea of a break with the past, which takes form in sentences such as this one: “Eventually, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics could upend how almost everything is done.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Upend:

      As used by most people: knock over, impede progress, halt a person’s or an object’s stability.

      As used by The Economist: to move forward, to embody progress.

      Contextual Note

      In recent decades, the notion of “disruptive innovation” has been elevated to the status of the highest ideal of modern capitalism. Formerly, disruption had a purely negative connotation as a factor of risk. Now it has become the obligatory goal of dynamic entrepreneurs. Upending was something to be avoided. Now it is actively pursued as the key to success. Let “synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and robotics” do their worst as they disrupt the habits and lifestyles of human beings, The Economist seems to be saying the more upending they entrepreneurs manage to do, the more their profits will grow.

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      In the neoliberal scheme of things, high profit margins resulting from the automatic monopoly of disruptive innovation will put more money in the hands of those who know how to use it — the entrepreneurs. Once they have settled the conditions for mooring their yachts in Monte Carlo, they may have time to think about creating new jobs, the one thing non-entrepreneurial humans continue to need and crave.

      For ordinary people, the new jobs may mean working alongside armies of artificially intelligent robots, though in what capacity nobody seems to know. In all likelihood, disruptive thinkers will eventually have to imagine a whole new set of “bullshit jobs” to replace the ones that have been upended. The language throughout the article radiates an astonishingly buoyant worldview at a moment of history in which humanity is struggling to survive the effects of an aggressive pandemic, to say nothing of the collapse of the planet’s biosphere, itself attributable to the unbridled assault of disruptive technology over the past 200 years.

      What The Economist wants us to believe is that the next round of disruption will be a positive one, mitigating the effects of the previous round that produced, alongside fabulous financial prosperity, a series of increasingly dire negative consequences.

      The article’s onslaught of rhetoric begins with the development of the cliché present in the title telling us that “a dawn of technological optimism is breaking.” The authors scatter an impressive series of positively resonating ideas through the body of the text: “speed,” “prominent breakthroughs,” “investment boom,” “new era of progress,” “optimists,” “giddily predict,” “advances,” “new era of innovation,” “lift living standards,” “new technologies to flourish,” “transformative potential,” “science continues to empower medicine,” “bend biology to their will,” “impressive progress,” “green investments,” “investors’ enthusiasm,” “easing the constraints,” “boost long-term growth,” “a fresh wave of innovation” and “economic dynamism.”

      The optimism sometimes takes a surprising twist. The authors forecast that in the race for technological disruption, “competition between America and China could spur further bold steps.” Political commentators in the US increasingly see conflict with China. Politicians are pressured to get tough on China. John Mearsheimer notably insists on the necessity of hegemonic domination by the US. Why? Because liberal capitalism must conquer, not cooperate. But in the rosy world foreseen by The Economist, friendship will take the day.

      Historical Note

      We at the Daily Devil’s Dictionary believe the world would be a better place if schools offered courses on how to decipher the media. That is unlikely to happen any time soon because today’s schools are institutions that function along the same lines as the media. They have been saddled with the task of disseminating an official worldview designed to support the political and economic system that supports them. 

      Official worldviews always begin with a particular reading of history. Some well-known examples show how nations design their history, the shared narrative of the past, to mold an attitude about the future. In the US, the narrative of the war that led to the founding of the nation established the cultural idea of the moral validity associated with declaring independence, establishing individual rights and justifying rebellion against unjust authority. Recent events in Washington, DC, demonstrate how that instilled belief, when assimilated uncritically, can lead to acts aiming at upending both society and government.

      In France, the ideas associated with the French Revolution, a traumatically upending event, spawned a different type of belief in individual rights. For the French, it must be expressed collectively through organized actions of protest on any issue. US individualism, founded on the frontier ideal of self-reliance, easily turns protestation into vigilante justice by the mob. In France, protests take the form of strikes and citizen movements.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The British retain the memory of multiple historical invasions of their island by Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans and more recent attempts by Napoleon and Hitler. The British people have always found ways of resisting. This habit led enough of them to see the European Union as an invader to vote for Brexit.

      The Italian Renaissance blossomed in the brilliant courts and local governments of its multiple city-states. Although Italy was unified in 1870, its citizens have never fully felt they belonged to a modern nation-state. The one serious but ultimately futile attempt was Mussolini’s fascism, which represented the opposite extreme of autonomous city-states.

      The article in The Economist contains some examples of its reading of economic history. At the core of its argument is this reminder: “In the history of capitalism rapid technological advance has been the norm.” While asserting neoliberal “truths,” like that “Governments need to make sure that regulation and lobbying do not slow down disruption,” it grudgingly acknowledges that government plays a role in technological innovation. Still, the focus remains on what private companies do, even though it is common knowledge that most consumer technology originated in taxpayer-funded military research. 

      Here is how The Economist defines the relationship: “Although the private sector will ultimately determine which innovations succeed or fail, governments also have an important role to play. They should shoulder the risks in more ‘moonshot’ projects.” The people assume the risks and the corporations skim off the profit. This is neoliberal ideology in a nutshell.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in UK Politics

      Labour calls for Gavin Williamson to resign after ‘failing children throughout pandemic’

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      Speaking in parliament, Labour’s Wes Streeting slammed the government for “having to be dragged to do the right thing” over free school meals in the past and last year’s exam results controversy – which initially saw tens of thousands of grades initially downgraded by an algorithm before a government U-turn.Kate Green, the shadow education secretary, earlier said his record during the coronavirus pandemic had been “shambolic”, as her party said there had been a “litany of government mistakes” over children and education.“We cannot praise staff in schools and school leaders in one breath and then in the other defend the leadership they have been subjected to under this secretary of state for education,” Mr Streeting told parliament on Monday evening.“If the prime minister had any judgment, he would have sacked the secretary of state, and if the secretary of state had any shame, he would have resigned.”Labour reiterated the call for Mr Williamson to go in a statement on Tuesday, saying there had been a “series of failures” – including over free school meals and laptop provision.“Despite being shamed into providing free school meals over the summer and Christmas holidays the government is again refusing to provide support for children now over February half-term,” the party said. It also accused the government of “failure to keep children learning either in school or from home” with pupils still lacking devices. The DfE and Downing Street has been approached for comment.Labour’s Ms Green called for Gavin Williamson to resign for the first time last week, after images of food parcels handed out to families were heavily criticised. Mr Williamson said he was “absolutely disgusted” after seeing a picture of a meagre food parcel delivered to a disabled mother-of-two.The education secretary also said companies will be “named and shamed” if they fail to deliver against food standards, and has urged schools to cancel contracts where necessary. The party used an opposition day debate in the Commons on Monday afternoon to say that eligible families should be guaranteed to receive the full value of free school meals throughout the year, including during the holidays.Downing Street accused Labour of pulling a “political stunt” over planned debates on Universal Credit and free school meals.“MPs are being told to abstain because today is not the day when we will be announcing our next steps on the £20 Universal Credit uplift,” the prime minister’s press secretary, Allegra Stratton, said.She added: “This is an Opposition day debate. It is them making families up and down the country concerned they will not be able to get the food they might need during the February half-term, when that is not true.”Labour is pulling a political stunt because they know that children who could go hungry during the February half-term will not go hungry because of the policy that is in place.” More

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      in UK Politics

      Pupils to get set number of hours of remote education and Ofsted to inspect where it has concerns, government says

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      Pupils will receive a set daily number of hours of remote education during England’s new lockdown, the government has confirmed – adding that Ofsted will be able to inspect schools where it has concerns about the quality of education.As the country was plunged into its third national lockdown, schools moved online until at least mid-February for all students except vulnerable children and the children of key workers.On Wednesday, the Department for Education (DfE) said strengthened expectations for remote education would be put in place.Officials said schools will be expected to deliver a set number of hours for remote education for pupils, which will be an increase from what schools have been expected to deliver for students unable to go to class.Gavin Williamson told parliament on Wednesday that Ofsted would enforce legal requirements for state schools in England to provide high-quality remote education during the lockdown.The education secretary sparked anger from unions after saying parents can report schools to Ofsted if they are unhappy with their child’s remote learning provision during closures.“The last thing teachers and heads need right now is the spectre of Ofsted, which has been of neither use nor ornament throughout the pandemic,” Dr Mary Bousted from the National Education Union said. Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said schools have spent the last 48 hours “working tirelessly” to put plans in place following the sudden announcement of closures.“It is therefore nothing short of disgraceful that the government should choose today to start threatening schools about the quality of their remote learning offer,” he said.The government said on Wednesday Ofsted will “play an important role in holding schools to account” for the quality of the remote education they provide during lockdown.  Ofsted can inspect schools where it has significant concerns about the quality of education being provided – including remote education – and parents can report concerns to the watchdog having first gone to the school, the DfE said. Ofsted will also carry out spring-term inspections of schools most in need of challenge and support – which will have a strong focus on remote education.“While schools and colleges are closed to most pupils, education remains a national priority”an Ofsted spokesman said. “There are clear requirements about remote learning and our monitoring inspections this term will focus on how well these are being met, to provide reassurance to parents”.Mr Williamson said on Wednesday closing schools was the “last thing” any education secretary wanted. “But the closing of schools for the majority of pupils does not mean the end of their education, and the outlook for schools, parents and young people is far more positive than the one we faced last year,” he said.“Schools and colleges are much better prepared to deliver online learning – with the delivery of hundreds of thousands of devices at breakneck speed, data support and high quality video lessons available.”Additional reporting by Press Association More

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      GCSE and A-level students in England will not be asked to sit exams in summer 2021

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      It comes after Michael Gove suggested end-of-year exams would be scrapped in favour of alternative styles of assessment following the new lockdown.On Monday evening, the Department for Education (DfE) said: “There is recognition that this is an anxious time for students who have been working hard towards their exams.”“The government position is that we will not be asking students to sit GCSE and A-levels.” The DfE said they will work with Ofqual, England’s exam regulator, to consult on how to award grades to pupils this year. Exams were cancelled last year over coronavirus and a new grading system set up, awarding students with calculated grades. Pupils were allowed to take their original teacher predicted marks, following backlash over the system.On Monday, Mr Gove was asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether A-levels and GCSEs in England were cancelled for the second year in a row, and replied: “Yes.”The former education secretary said: “We will be putting in place alternative arrangements in order to make sure that the hard work that students have put in to acquire knowledge and develop their skills is appropriately assessed, recognised and awarded.”He also told Sky News that Gavin Williamson, the current education secretary, will address parliament on Wednesday to update MPs on how pupils will be assessed at the end of the year, following further disruption to their learning.Under England’s new lockdown, schools will move to online-learning only until at least the middle of February, for all students except vulnerable children and those of key workers. While schools remained open last term, more than half a million state school pupils were off school during the final weeks of term for coronavirus-related reasons, Department for Education (DfE) estimates show.The government faced backlash over how grading was done last year amid cancelled exams, when teachers submitted grades they estimated students would have achieved in exams for standardisation.Additional reporting by Press Association More