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Will the furlough scheme being extended until April 2021 provide enough job security for the UK?

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Image source: Sky News The British furlough scheme, otherwise known as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (JRS), was first announced in March, on the same day that a UK-wide lockdown was announced by PM Boris Johnson. The JRS entails that eligible workers can receive 80% of their wages for hours missed due to lockdowns, shielding, caring for the vulnerable or self-isolating, for a maximum of £2,500 a month. Employers did not have to contribute to the scheme until August unless the employee was flexibly furloughed (working certain hours but furloughed for the rest).   The scheme was initially set to expire in May 2020 but was extended until October. It was then prolonged until March 2021 and has recently been extended for an additional month. These numerous extensions took place despite Chancellor Rishi Sunak expressing his unwillingness to ‘endlessly extend furlough’. So, how successful has the JRS been thus far? The HM Treasury has hailed it a success. In terms of its short-ter
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The A-Levels and GCSEs fiasco - who was more to blame?

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  A-Level and GCSE students experienced a very turbulent period ever since exams were cancelled back in March, but particularly over the last few weeks of August, resulting from the effects of a flawed algorithm on pupils’ results, and the withdrawal of these grades a week later. The damage these decisions has caused has not been reversed, however, and many are furious at both Ofqual’s and the government’s incompetence, with the Ofqual chief Sally Collier having announced her resignation and even the permanent secretary of the Department of Education set to be replaced, but there is much debate about who is most at fault. Students’ future prospects and mental health were badly affected, both for those receiving results and those waiting for them during an incredibly uncertain period of time. Although there were bound to be difficulties, the government has had the most agency over both its own decisions and the decisions of Ofqual, and it was the body which primarily decided how grades
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Exam Shambles

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Image source: thesun.co.uk Since A-Level results have been published in England, there has been widespread protest and outrage about the allocation of grades to pupils on the basis of a clearly biased algorithm, favouring those from more privileged areas over students from more disadvantaged areas as it is based on schools' previous performance rather than honouring the predicted grades given by teachers. Teachers had to rank students depending on the likelihood of students achieving each grade, using evidence including mocks, unit tests, and in some cases KS2 SATS results. For example, out of the students who were predicted Grade 9s, the student with the top rank would have had the highest probability of achieving a Grade 9, whereas the student with the bottom rank might have been just as likely to achieve a Grade 8 as a Grade 9. When the government's standardisation came into effect, many students who were lower down on the ranks moved down and achieved much lower grades to m
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