Coronavirus news- live: Protests and calls to postpone GCSE results as appeals ‘mess’ deepens A-level chaos
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Your support makes all the difference.Hundreds of protesters have filled the streets outside the Department for Education, after nearly 40 per cent of A-level marks were downgraded from teachers’ suggestions by a government algorithm.
Amid fears that GCSEs could be even harder hit, the former education secretary who introduced them, Lord Baker, urged current secretary Gavin Williamson to postpone the looming results, following the ”unfair and barely explicable downgrades” of A-levels.
Meanwhile, Matt Hancock was reportedly moving to abolish Public Health England and instead set up a new organisation set up to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, with the health secretary expected to announce that the pandemic response work of PHE will be merged with the NHS Test and Trace programme.
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China 'purged' database to alter coronavirus figures given to WHO, cyber security expert alleges
A former cyber security contractor has alleged that leaked data from the Wuhan Institute of Virology shows the Chinese Communist Party “purged” its database to drastically alter the country’s coronavirus figures given to the Word Health Organisation.
“When we analysed that, it was a bit of a mismatch of data against what they’d been publicly putting out there to the World Health Organisation,” Robert Potter told Sky News.
“Once the story became quite a bit contentious, when the Chinese Communist Party realised that the coronavirus was going to become a global pandemic, they went about, it appears, purging the data out of this particular database.”
UK records 1,040 new coronavirus cases and five deaths
It is the sixth day in a row that more than 1,000 infections have been discovered.
A further five people were reported to have died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus.
Protesters fill street outside Department of Education
Dozens of students sat down on the floor at the front door of the Department of Education as hundreds filled the street, chanting "vote them out", with many demonstrators holding signs referencing the next election.
"We're voting age now, most of us, and we're young," Maya Szollosy, 18, from London, told PA.
"We're going to remember this for many years until the general election and I don't think many students are going to vote for the Conservative Party after what they did to us."
Godfather of GCSEs tells government to postpone results after 'unfair and barely explicable downgrades' of A-levels
Gavin Williamson has been urged not to release GSCE results next week by the former Tory education secretary who introduced them.
Lord Kenneth Baker told Mr Williamson that publication of results should be postponed for two weeks because of the "unfair and barely explicable downgrades" of A-levels.
"I urge the education secretary to instruct Ofqual not to release the GCSEs results this Thursday as their algorithm is flawed. The A-level results have produced hundreds of thousands of unfair and barely explicable downgrades," said Lord Baker, who oversaw the launch of GCSEs in the late Eighties.
"They have helped smaller private schools but hit the brighter students in a poorly performing state school. It is not surprising that various parties are considering legal actions.
"The Royal Statistical Society has claimed that Ofqual has breached its 'obligation to serve the public good' and its model failed to 'achieve quality and trustworthiness'.
"Last week A-levels were allowed to increase by 2 per cent, but for GCSEs this week schools have only been allowed a 1% increase. This will result in millions of aggrieved students and many more millions of aggrieved parents and grandparents. If you are in a hole, stop digging.
"The GCSE results should be postponed for two weeks. The government can then decide either to accept the predicted grades or invite heads to resubmit new predictions which should not exceed 3% of their performance in 2019."
Education unions condemn government's 'political Punch and Judy show' over handling of A-levels
In a letter to members of the school leaders' union NAHT, general secretary Paul Whiteman has described the the "fiasco" surrounding A-level results as a "political Punch and Judy show".
"The focus should be about finding solutions for those young people, not debating the rights and wrongs of a model to save political blushes. It is far too late for that," he said.
"The government needs to get a grip and take rapid and decisive action to restore confidence, fairness and stability both for young people that received their A-level grades last week but also those receiving their GSCEs in the days to come."
Their comments follow the decision by England's exams regulator Ofqual to suspend its appeals policy, which took into account mock exam results, hours after it issued the guidance on Saturday.
And despite a pledge from Gavin Williamson that they could use the highest result out of their teacher's predicted grade, their mock exam or sitting a full exam in the autumn, the Ofqual guidance published on Saturday, which has since been taken down, said that if the mock result was higher than the teacher's prediction then the latter would count.
Protesters have started to leave the Department for Education and headed towards Downing Street as the demonstration entered its third hour.
Three vans of police were at the protest, with three uniformed officers in dark blue face masks at the doors of the Department for Education.
Ministers accused of trying to deflect attention from handling of pandemic by breaking up PHE
Amid reports that Matt Hancock will break up Public Health England (PHE), Chris Hopson, NHS Providers chief executive, said "years of underfunding" for PHE and public health more generally have left the country unprepared to deal with a pandemic.
He said unlike other health bodies such as NHS England, PHE - which replaced the Health Protection Agency (HPA) in 2013 under the Conservatives' NHS reorganisation - is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care.
"This gives ministers direct control of its activities," he said. "So whilst it might be convenient to seek to blame PHE's leadership team, it is important that the government reflect on its responsibilities as well."
His comments were echoed by Dr Amitava Banerjee, associate professor at the Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, who said the move is a "huge concern" in the midst of a global health crisis.
"If PHE has fallen short, responsibility lies firmly with the current government and health ministers," he said. "Rather than a rash restructuring, a sensible approach must involve a rapid enquiry to establish lessons learned for future waves and future pandemics."
Wales lifts ban on public transport for leisure travel
The Welsh government has said that from Monday, Wales will finally join the rest of the UK in permitting the use of public transport for leisure travel – “opening up trains and buses to more potential passengers”, Simon Calder reports.
Since the coronavirus pandemic began, Transport for Wales has told prospective passengers: “Thank you for not travelling with us during these exceptional times. This helps keep trains clear in Wales for key workers and those with essential needs.”
The Welsh government has announced the “essential travel only” message will be lifted from 17 August.
Government accused of ‘passing the buck’ with reported plan to scrap Public Health England
Lib Dem chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus, Layla Moran, responded to reports in the Sunday Telegraph that Matt Hancock will announce plans this week to scrap Public Health England by saying:
Professor Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said: “The reports in the media that the UK government is likely to announce the reorganisation of Public Health England is perhaps no great surprise.
"What is a surprise is that this is happening in the middle of the greatest public health challenge to the UK since the second world war."
Scotland facing ‘stream of infections’ from England and Wales, warns senior Scottish government advisor
Professor Devi Sridhar, who sits on the Scottish government’s Covid-19 Advisory Group, said England and Wales are “behaving more like the rest of Europe”, which has seen a recent relaxing of restrictions and subsequent rise in cases.
Her latest comments have drawn criticism from the Scottish Liberal Democrats, who said recent outbreaks in Aberdeen and Orkney could be not attributed to imported cases from across the border.
Writing in an opinion piece for the New York Times, Professor Sridhar said: “Scotland and Northern Ireland have looked ahead at the coming winter and made a concerted plan to minimise community transmission to avoid a serious resurgence of the virus, by using the summer to drive cases as close to zero as possible and to reopen cautiously.
“But neither nation has control over its borders because they are parts of the United Kingdom. So both now face a stream of incoming infections from England and Wales, which are behaving more like the rest of Europe, as well as from people returning from holiday abroad and not abiding by advice to isolate for 14 days.”
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie dismissed the claims, arguing that it was “unhelpful” for Professor Sridhar to be “feeding a divisive nationalist narrative without scientific evidence to back it up.”
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