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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Helen Pidd; Fran Lawther and Kevin Rawlinson

UK coronavirus live: Croatia, Austria and Trinidad and Tobago added to quarantine list – as it happened

Passengers from international flights arrive at Heathrow Airport.
Passengers from international flights arrive at Heathrow Airport. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

Evening summary

That’s all from me today, folks. Thanks for reading. Here is a summary of today’s key events:

  • Travellers returning from Croatia, Austria and Trinidad and Tobago will have to quarantine for a fortnight if they arrive back after 4am on Saturday
  • But those coming back from Portugal will walk free after the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, added it to the government’s list of “travel corridors”
  • Northampton now has the second highest Covid infection rate in England, after Oldham.
  • But it is in Birmingham where officials are talking openly about being added to the government’s “watch list” of areas needing help to keep infections down
  • Another meat processing plant has had to close following an outbreak of Covid, this time in Northern Ireland. Thirty-five workers at Cranswick Country Foods in Cullybackey in County Antrim have tested positive.
  • There has been a week-on-week rise in the number of people testing positive in England for Covid: 6,616 people, an increase of 27% compared with the previous week.
  • Scotland has recorded the highest number of daily coronavirus cases in almost three months, with 77 testing positive overnight.

If you are not yet sated, switch over to our Global Covid blog, which will be updated throughout the night.

Updated

The shadow transport secretary, Jim McMahon, is calling on the government to publish the evidence behind its decision to add Croatia and other countries to its quarantine list.

Northampton now has the second highest Covid rate after Oldham

PA news agency has just posted its update on the the rolling seven-day rate of new cases of Covid-19 for every local authority area in England.

The figures, for the seven days to August 17, are based on tests carried out in laboratories (pillar one of the Government’s testing programme) and in the wider community (pillar two).

The rate is expressed as the number of new cases per 100,000 people. Data for the most recent three days (August 18-20) has been excluded as it is incomplete and likely to be revised.

In Oldham 187 new cases were recorded in the seven days to August 17 - the equivalent of 78.9 per 100,000 people, down from 111.8 in the seven days to August 10.

Northampton is almost level with Oldham on 78.4, up slightly from 74.4, with 176 new cases.

Blackburn with Darwen is third, where the rate has fallen from 81.5 to 67.5, with 101 new cases.

In Leicester the rate continues to fall, down from 70.3 to 52.5, with 186 new cases.

Other areas recording notable week-on-week jumps include:
- Manchester (up from 38.5 to 49.0, with 271 new cases)
- Bury (up from 22.0 to 33.0, with 63 new cases)
- Stoke-on-Trent (up from 15.6 to 26.1, with 67 new cases)

Less than a third of people in England being tested for coronavirus in the wider population are receiving their results within 24 hours — despite Boris Johnson promising all results would be turned around within that timeframe two months ago.

The latest data on the NHS Track and Trace programme show that 60.5% of people who were tested for Covid-19 in the week ending August 12 at a regional site or mobile testing unit, a so-called “in-person” test, received their result within 24 hours.

Of those tested that week at a satellite test centre, only 1.2% received their results within 24 hours while just 3.8% of people who used a home testing kits got results within 24 hours.

Across all four types of testing in the wider community, known as pillar two, only 28.2% of people received results within 24 hours.

This is a drop from 34.4% the previous week and 57.4% during the week ending July 1, the data showed.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the delays were due to an IT system failure at one of the laboratories which had delayed processing results and created a backlog.

Johnson had pledged that, by the end of June, the results of all in-person tests would be back within 24 hours.

He told the House of Commons on June 3 he would get “all tests turned around within 24 hours by the end of June, except for difficulties with postal tests or insuperable problems like that”.

Much of the attention around Oldham’s infection rates have focused on the town’s Asian community.

But a pub in the wealthy — and largely white - Uppermill area of Saddleworth has just been ordered to close by Oldham council for “continually” breaking lockdown regulations.

Updated

Meat Processing plant in Northern Ireland to shut after 35 staff test positive

A meat processing plant in Co Antrim is to temporarily close after 35 staff members tested positive for coronavirus.

Cranswick Country Foods in Cullybackey, which processes pigs, will close from Saturday evening for a deep clean and to allow all staff members to be tested for Covid-19, the company has confirmed.

In a statement Cranswick Country Foods said: “There has been a recent increase in the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Ballymena and the wider region and this has been acknowledged as a community issue.

“As a result of this, we can confirm that a number of colleagues at our Ballymena site have tested positive for Covid-19. Working with the Public Health Authority (PHA), we have taken the decision to send all of our colleagues for testing.

“If the test results are positive, the individual will be required to self-isolate for 10 days; if the test results are negative, the individual will be required to self-isolate for 14 days.

“Therefore, the site will need to temporarily suspend production.”

Trade union Unite, which has members working at the Cranswick plant, said it was seeking urgent clarification from management regarding the extent of the cluster and the company’s plans to ensure the facility is safe when it re-opens.

Unite is also seeking assurances that workers sent home to self-isolate will not suffer any loss of pay.

Unite Regional Officer Liam Gallagher said: “The highly profitable meat processing sector relies on precarious, low-paid workers who may be reluctant to report symptoms or self-isolate because they fear a loss of pay.”

Another 51 people in Northern Ireland have tested positive for the virus on Thursday according to the Department of Health.

Some 298 people have tested positive for the virus in the last seven days, largely in the Mid and East Antrim area and Belfast.

Updated

Following the tightening of restrictions in Northern Ireland this afternoon, the Police Service of Northern Ireland has arrested a man in his 40s over allegations of “malicious” comments being made on social media directed at Robin Swann, the regional health minister.

Swann, the former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader, said in response: “I would rather people direct that frustration and anger at me as minister, than at the health service workers or those front-line workers.”

But his successor as UUP leader, Steve Aiken, condemned the threats, saying:

The vicious threats of violence made against Robin Swann are absolutely despicable. The torrent of abuse and lies which Robin has had to put with from some anonymous trolls and others who should know better has been abhorrent. Nobody should have to put up with that. It’s long before time that Twitter and other social media platforms lived up to their responsibilities.

“This isn’t the first time that Robin has had threats of physical violence made against him, but it should be the last. He took on a job which no-one else wanted and he has committed long days and nights making difficult decisions, working with his colleagues in the Department of Health and the NHS, to protect the public during a global pandemic, the likes of which we haven’t faced in 100 years. He has been verbally attacked, threats of physical violence made against him and his family, and attempts made to undermine his good character.”

Updated

The Daily Mirror’s associate editor, Kevin Maguire, is among many would-be holiday makers now cancelling their trips after Croatia and other countries were removed from the UK’s list of quarantine-free “travel corridors”.

Lockdown restrictions could be tightened in Blackburn and Pendle in east Lancashire, Inzy Rashid at Sky News is reporting. Currently both areas are subject to “enhanced measures”, along with Greater Manchester and parts of West Yorkshire, which restrict gatherings in homes and gardens.

Dominic Harrison, Blackburn’s director of public health, says about half of all confirmed cases of coronavirus locally are within the same households. Most infections are clustered in very small areas he said, heralding a “hyper-local approach” to tackling the outbreaks from now on.

He writes in the Lancashire Telegraph:

Here someone, maybe a younger household member has become infected and may be asymptomatic. They will unknowingly pass it on to other household members and as an older member gets symptoms the whole family gets tested and find out they are all positive. A very large number of the remaining cases in the borough are clustered in very small areas, in a number of streets, statistically at a ‘lower super output area’- of about 1,500 people. Here it is clear that transmission must be occurring between family, friends and neighbours.

Blackburn has around double the testing rates of the national average he said, but the figures remain concerning:

So far, despite our best efforts, we still have amongst the highest rates of transmission in the country. We had our highest rate of cases per 100,000 of the population in the week ending August 12 We have had a Covid confirmed case rate of 94.7 per 100,000 of the population – which represents 141 cases per week. Our testing rates are still about double the national average at 210 per 100,000 and our positivity rate is at 6.5 per cent. This is also the highest it has been in recent weeks.

If we are going to avoid a full lockdown by central government we now need to be even more prescriptive on what can and can’t be done, to target the behaviours we know risk passing on the virus and to move to a stricter enforcement approach to breaches of the guidance.

The approach we take from now on is going to have to be even more targeted on hyper-local areas of highest transmission.”

Updated

Shapps said the decision to change the travel corridors took a range of factors into account, including:

  • the estimated prevalence of Covid-19 in a country
  • the level and rate of change in the incidence of confirmed positive cases
  • the extent of testing in a country
  • the testing regime and test positivity
  • the extent to which cases can be accounted for by a contained outbreak as opposed to more general transmission in the community
  • government actions
  • and other relevant epidemiological information

Shapps said Portugal has now been added to the list of travel corridors, meaning that travellers from there will no longer have to quarantine for 14 days.

Visitors to Croatia, Austria and Trinidad & Tobago will have to quarantine from Saturday

Croatia, Austria and Trinidad & Tobago will be removed from the UK’s list of travel corridors, the transport secretary Grant Shapps has said.

That means anyone returning from those countries will have to quarantine for 14 days if they return after 4am on Saturday.

Updated

The Belfast Telegraph has more details on the tightening of restrictions in Northern Ireland.

It reports the Northern Irish health secretary, Robin Swann, talking of a “significant and difficult” outbreak at a meat-processing plant in Co Antrim, after 35 new cases emerged from within staff, some infecting friends and family.

“All workers in the factory now have to self-isolate,” he said, adding that the plant will be closed to allow for deep cleaning and the testing of staff. “I am becoming concerned with the increase in community transmission,” he said. “There will be no further relaxations of any other measures.

Swann said the R rate in Northern Ireland is currently 1.3 and is “definitely” above 1, the newspaper reported.

The UK government said 41,403 people had died in the UK within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of 5pm on Wednesday, an increase of six on the day before.

Separate figures published by the UK’s statistics agencies show there have now been 57,000 deaths registered in the UK where coronavirus was mentioned on the death certificate.

The government also said that as of 9am on Thursday, there had been a further 1,182 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus. Overall, 322,280 cases have been confirmed.

Updated

Northern Ireland tightens lockdown

Lockdown restrictions are being tightened in Northern Ireland after 51 new coronavirus infections were reported overnight. This from the BBC’s Northern Ireland correspondent, Chris Page:

Updated

Officials in Oldham are encouraging all residents to take a coronavirus test whether or not they have symptoms or think they have been in touch with anyone who has tested positive.

Council leader Sean Fielding has been leading by example.

Fielding said he had no symptoms but was encouraging everybody to take a test:

Updated

More signs of nervousness in Birmingham, where officials believe the city is about to be put on the government’s “watch list”, putting it at risk of lockdown restrictions.

Gareth Morris, a superintendent in Birmingham with West Midlands police, has written a message for residents advising them to work together to prevent a local lockdown in the city.

The impact on people’s lives and businesses has already been so significantly affected by the national lockdown, that we must try and do all we can to prevent that occurring in Birmingham and taking us into a state of city wide lockdown. I recognise that this will continue to be really hard especially for our children, young adults and the elderly who are already feeling the strain of being separated from their extended family and friends.

He asks those attending “a music event in a park or street” to examine their consciences:

I would ask everyone to look around their family before attending these events and ask yourselves how you would feel if you were the one who brought the virus home. That’s the reality of the risks, our families are not easily replaced.

And he said that while police did not ask for the powers they have been given to enforce lockdown regulations – and only fined people as a last resort – they will do whatever it takes to control the virus.

Some of the gatherings in Birmingham have also resulted in disorder and serious offences. We will continue to try to engage and educate people on the risks and ask them to follow the guidelines. We have been given legislation and direction to help control the virus. Enforcing such measures on people is not something we want to do – but we do have to act to try and keep the infection rates down for the whole city and in turn the whole of the UK.

Updated

NHS staff are participating in a trial that aims to see whether dogs can sniff out Covid-19.

Testing has begun to see whether medical detection dogs can be trained to smell the virus. Scientists are seeking “odour samples” to see whether dogs can accurately pick up the scent of coronavirus, even in people who are asymptomatic.

There could be huge implications if the dogs can successfully smell out Covid-19, not just in medical settings but in other sectors of society too, with researchers estimating the animals could potentially screen up to 250 people an hour.

As part of the trial, led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in collaboration with the charity Medical Detection Dogs alongside Durham University, volunteers will provide samples of breath and body odour by wearing a mask for three hours, and socks and a T-shirt for 12 hours.

It is hoped that if the trial is successful the dogs can be used at UK airports to screen people arriving from abroad.

Kettering general hospital is one of 11 hospitals taking part in the study and 92 staff members have signed up to the trial. Its lead nurse for research, Joanne Walsh, said: “Our contribution involves recruiting staff volunteers from colleagues who are about to have a Covid-19 swab test.

“After having their swab test we ask them to wear special nylon socks for 12 hours and a mask for three hours and then to bag these up and return them to us.

“We then send the samples, along with whether the person has tested positive or negative for Covid-19, to the team who are doing the research with the dogs in Milton Keynes.”

Claire Guest, head of Medical Detection Dogs, said: “Our dogs have already successfully detected different types of cancer, Parkinson’s and malaria among other diseases which affect millions of people around the world.

“We are very proud that a dog’s nose could be part of a solution to find a fast, non-invasive way of diagnosing Covid-19 and make a tangible difference to any future pandemics.”

Updated

Rise in number of people testing positive in England

The number of people testing positive for coronavirus in England has risen by over a quarter, new figures show.

There were 6,616 people whose tests came back positive between 6-12 August - an increase of 27% compared with the previous week.

This was despite a 2% drop in the number of people who were tested. The figures also show this was the first week that showed a notable increase in positive tests carried out at NHS facilities.

Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at Norwich school of medicine, said: “The fact that positive diagnoses have risen at a time when the number of tests are remaining fairly static does suggest that the incidence of Covid-19 in the community is now beginning to rise again.

“The additional sharp rise in pillar 1 tests being positive in particular supports this assumption. Because pillar 1 tests are done in NHS facilities, they are more likely driven by clinical need than pillar 2 tests and are a somewhat better indicator of the number of people becoming ill enough to seek medical attention.

“Clearly if this trend continues the demands on the test track and trace service and on the NHS will increase over coming weeks.”

Updated

Whitehall departments have spent more than £56m on consultancy firms to help deal with the coronavirus pandemic, mostly without giving other companies the chance to compete for the work, the Guardian and openDemocracy can reveal.

Sixteen private consultancy firms, including major companies such as Deloitte, PwC, Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey have been working at the heart of the government’s response to the virus.

They have been rapidly hired to work on the track-and-trace system, the purchase of personal protective equipment (PPE) and the search to produce working ventilators.

Among the contracts given to McKinsey, was one where its consultants were paid £563,000 for six weeks’ work – £14,000 a day – to create a permanent replacement for Public Health England, helping define its “vision, purpose and narrative”.

You can read the full story here:

Updated

In the webinar, Bell also discussed how it may be easier to get to herd immunity if lots of people have T-cell immunity.

Scientists have already said measuring T-cell response could be a more reliable indication of how coronavirus is spreading in the community than antibody testing.

T-cells can wipe out viruses if usual immune cells are unsuccessful, with so-called “killer” T-cells attacking the illness directly.

Bell said: “People calculating herd immunity I don’t think assumed that we would have this level of T-cell immunity in the population.

“And that may make it easier to get to herd immunity if lots of us have got T-cell immunity that largely protects us from the disease, so we may be closer to herd immunity than we originally thought, and it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.”

Updated

A top academic has warned of a second wave of coronavirus and a difficult winter ahead.

John Bell, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, said he thinks there is a “really bumpy” winter on the way, especially with the additional risk of flu.

He also pointed out how important it was to have easy access to tests, particularly for schools and universities.

Speaking on a Royal Society of Medicine webinar, Bell said: “My bet is that we will get a second wave, and the vaccines won’t get here in time to stop the second wave. And I’m not sure the new home testing is going to get there in time either, but it perhaps will take the edge off it.

“But then I suspect by Christmas or early in the new year, there may be more than one option for vaccines. My suspicion is the vaccines will work a bit, they won’t sterilise people, but they’ll take the edge off the disease, and they’ll definitely be worth using in a population.

“But they won’t solve this problem. And by the way, the rest of the world is still going to have Covid going through the winter.

“But just to be crystal clear, it’s going to be a bumpy winter. There’s nothing I can see that’s going to make this an easy winter.”

Bell also raised the issue of vaccine scepticism, adding: “There’s a real issue of trust I think at the moment. And we’ve got to maintain that trust if we’re going to make any vaccine programme successful.”

Speaking about testing and schools, Bell said there was data that suggested children were “pretty infectious” when they had the virus. “They’re usually asymptomatic and they’re quite infectious, so managing the disease in a school environment is going to be really important for the overall trace, trace and isolate programme,” he said.

Updated

Back to education:

The exams result fiasco reflects a “broken education system steeped in racism and classism,” the president of the National Union of Students has said as the body called for a far-reaching overhaul to the exam and grading system.

Students have been staging a virtual protest today under the hashtag of #justiceforeducation along with physically distanced pickets of Department for Education offices in a number of cities including Manchester, Bristol and Coventry.

“We need to redress the fact that the algorithm behind this was created not by mistake, not out of thin air,” NUS national president Larissa Kennedy told a small protest outside the department’s London headquarters.

“It was created by people who thought it was OK that if you are from a working class background, if you were a student of colour, if you were a student with a disability then you were due to get lower grades.”

Students from elite schools had enjoyed the lion’s share of the cake when it came to university places, she said, while others “had to make do with the crumbs”.

And in Manchester and Bristol:

Updated

A press officer from Birmingham city council says the local authority does not yet know if it will indeed be added to the “watch list” of areas giving the government cause for concern, as per the fears of its director of public health. (see the post from 14.10).

Coronavirus has been on the increase in the city in recent weeks, with 32 cases per 100,000 people from 9-15 August. The average area in England had 8.

There were 367 positive cases in Birmingham last week, up from 142 the previous week.

Yesterday, ian Ward, the leader of Birmingham City Council, said: “The rise in case numbers, although not currently on the scale seen elsewhere in the country, is extremely concerning – we all need to wake up to the severity of the current situation.

“If we are forced to go back to the dark days of spring it will be because we haven’t collectively done our bit for the greater good of the city.

“It will set our already fragile economy back and that could mean more job uncertainty and further struggles to make ends meet for many.”

Updated

More information from the government on test and trace, proving once again that local teams are far better at contact tracing than call handlers working for the national scheme.

During the 11 weeks that test and trace has been in operation, of those cases handled by local health protection teams, 97.7% of close contacts of people who tested positive for Covid-19 have been reached and asked to self-isolate.

By contrast, for those cases handled either online or by call centres, 56.9% of close contacts have been reached and asked to self-isolate.

Dr Jeanelle de Gruchy, president of the Association of Directors of Public Health, has written an interesting blog post about the decision to disband Public Health England (PHE) and replace it with a new body.

You can read it in full here, but here are a few highlights:

Arguably the time to ensure that we have national organisations able to cope with the surge of an inevitable pandemic is before it arrives. Dismantling a national public health agency in the middle of a pandemic citing this to not be the case is a bold move. Aiming to have set up the replacement within weeks, ready for a potential second wave seems ambitious and presents a significant risk.

On the subject of PHE’s successor organisation, the National Institute for Health Protection, De Gruchy writes:

We must ensure that the new public health system works as one, across organisations, and between national and local, with the ready flow of knowledge, expertise, data and intelligence between them. However, whilst embedding public health across any new system is vital, it requires strong local and national leadership and coordination. Our experience is that in the past this has been difficult. We need to see this culture of collaboration hard-wired into the new system as it is conceived.

She asks the government a number of questions about the decision:

Public health is much more than health protection and these announcements have raised more questions than answers. PHE has a wide range of functions, how will these continue? Functions such as data and intelligence, workforce support, research and policy are all important. How will the current confused responsibilities between and across multiple agencies be clarified? Will the current legislative framework support or obstruct the intentions of new policy? What will be devolved to local? Will the level of resourcing be sufficient for the need?

Over to you, Matt Hancock ...

Updated

A total of 57,457 people who tested positive for Covid-19 in England have had their cases transferred to the NHS Test and Trace contact tracing system since its launch, according to figures from the Department of Health and Social Care.

Of this total, 45,037 (78%) were reached and asked to provide details of recent contacts, while 10,827 were not reached.

A further 1,593 could not be reached because their communication details had not been provided.

The figures cover the period 28 May to 12 August.

Updated

Birmingham likely to join government 'watch list' as cases rise

Birmingham is set to join the national Covid “watch list” and faces a one week race against time to avoid a devastating lockdown, the Birmingham Mail reports.

Dr Justin Varney, director of public health, told business leaders this afternoon that the rise in cases has been “dramatic” and triggered national concern.

He warned that a lockdown would be “devastating” to the Birmingham economy:

There is a meeting of gold command this morning (with health secretary Matt Hancock) going on – the national watch list is being discussed and is published tomorrow.

I expect we will be on that national list and will go on as an area of ‘enhanced support’ – that is not the level that Leicester and Greater Manchester are in, but the level below that – think Northamptonshire, Blackburn, areas like that, certainly over the next week.

We will be providing additional guidance over the weekend (about what that means. We will be reinforcing guidance, with additional advice for people. We will be reinforcing those messages to the public.

What we do in the next seven days will decide if we go into lockdown or not. If we do it will be for at least two or three weeks, and that will be devastating.

Each week government experts produce the Watchlist, which lists the local authorities with the highest weekly incidence rate and its trend, combined with a range of other indicators including the test positivity rate, an assessment of the local response and plans, and the trend of other metrics such as healthcare activity and mortality.

Areas are then given one of three classifications:

  1. Area(s) of concern: for areas with the highest prevalence, where the local area is taking targeted actions to reduce prevalence e.g. additional testing in care homes and increased community engagement with high risk groups.
  2. Area(s) for enhanced support: for areas at medium/high risk of intervention where there is a more detailed plan, agreed with the national team and with additional resources being provided to support the local team (eg epidemiological expertise, additional mobile testing capacity).
  3. Area(s) of intervention: where there is divergence from the measures in place in the rest of England because of the significance of the spread, with a detailed action plan in place, and local resources augmented with a national support.

Updated

It is a tale of two modern languages this year as Spanish enjoys record popularity at the same time as German sees its take-up fall below 40,000.

The number of candidates taking Spanish increased to above 100,000 for the first time this year, that’s up 8.4% on last year, which is a good boost given that the overall number of candidates is only up by 2.3%.

Just under a third (31.8%) of students achieved one of the top grades (7 or above).

There was also a slight increase (1.62%) in the number of French candidates this year, while the 29.5% of the grades awarded were a 7 or higher.

German was the only language with a decrease in the number of candidates, dropping to below 40,000 for the first time. A third of German grades were awarded grade 7 and above this year (up from 22.9%) when compared with the grades awarded in 2019.

The drop is a continuation of a trend away from German in recent years. There has been a 12% decrease in the total number of German candidates since 2016 (by contrast the total number of entries was 12% higher this year than in 2016).

French has also witnessed a decline, albeit not as steep, down of 5.4% since 2016.

However, Spanish is bucking the trend having witnessed an increase of 22.7% in candidates this year compared to four years ago.

Excluding French, Spanish and German, more than 16,000 candidates took other modern languages. Over 64% these candidates achieved the top grades of 7 and above.

More than 100,000 students took GCSE Spanish this year, but fewer than 40,000 took German
Standfirst ...
French
German
Spanish
20
40
60
80
100
120
140,000
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
Guardian graphic | Source: Ofqual. Note: 16-year-olds, England only.

Updated

After a flurry of recent government U-turns, Bernard Jenkin, the Tory chairman of the liaison committee, has said he is concerned that when something goes wrong “it is never the government’s fault”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s The World At One programme, Jenkin said: “Well ministers have to make decisions – they either support their people or they get rid of them and get new people, and they can’t have a halfway house.

“I am concerned that there’s a sort of pattern setting in under this government that something goes wrong and it is the permanent secretary’s fault or it’s some public body’s fault, but it is never the government’s fault.”

Jenkin’s words came days after the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, sought to blame the A-level fiasco on exams regulator Ofqual.

Jenkin also said: “I recognise that there is a lot of frustration in government about government machinery not seeming to function very well, or not responding to what ministers want, but the only way that the civil service can deliver what ministers want is if there is a free and open and trusting flow of information backwards and forwards from ministers and officials.

“If the whole … discourse between ministers and officials becomes stifled in an atmosphere of blame and fear, then I don’t think civil servants will be able to support ministers very effectively.

“Who is going to stick their head over the parapet, tell the minister the bad news, if they’re going to get blamed for it? There needs to be a much more collaborative approach to running the government than has been demonstrated.”

Updated

Holidaymakers told to keep tabs on quarantine list amid Croatia concerns

The government has urged holidaymakers to “keep an eye out” for changes to the travel quarantine list, amid increasing speculation Croatia could be included after a rise in coronavirus cases.

The Department for Transport (DfT) said an announcement could be made this week about changes to the UK’s list of safe travel corridors, with people returning from countries not included required to self-isolate for 14 days.

A significant increase in Covid-19 infections across Croatia in recent days means it may follow France in being removed from the safe travel list.

The number of cases per 100,000 people in Croatia has reportedly risen above 20, which is seen as a key benchmark.

A DfT spokesman declined to comment on Croatia, but told PA travellers should be aware the safe travel list could change this week.

The Balkans region is considered a “hotspot” for coronavirus by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Dr Catherine Smallwood told a WHO press conference: “The situation in the Balkans has been a concern of ours since early June when we started to see cases increase and it’s been very much a sub-regional hotspot over the summer period.”

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office also said travellers should “keep tabs” on any DfT announcements regarding travel corridors.

A spokesman said: “We are monitoring the international situation very closely and keeping our travel advice under constant review so that it reflects our latest assessment of risks to British people.

“Anyone wanting our latest travel advice updates can sign up to alerts on the FCO website or follow our Travel Advice social media accounts.”

Updated

As Scotland comes to the end of the first full week of schooling, Nicola Sturgeon has been asked about significant concerns raised by teachers and unions about safety in classrooms, as well as the inconsistent advice that young people are getting on distancing and face covering in and out of schools.

The Scottish Greens leader, Patrick Harvie, raised a letter written by Scotland’s largest teaching union, the EIS, calling for clarity: Sturgeon emphasised how important it was for children’s education and emotional well-being to have a return to full-time education. It is a point she made earlier when explaining why adults are still being advised to work from home to keep community transmissions down, and allow schools to remain open.

But she did add that guidance that face coverings were not needed in classrooms “may well be guidance we look to change in the near future”, saying that Scottish Sage is constantly reviewing new evidence.

Updated

The question of deaths in Scottish care homes, and how the virus got into those settings, was raised again at first minister’s questions, where Ruth Davidson – newly re-installed for the Scottish Tories – pressed the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, on the Sunday Post’s exclusive that patients who had tested positive for coronavirus were transferred from hospital to care homes during the weeks around the initial lockdown.

Sturgeon would not answer when her ministers knew this had happened, but insisted that Scottish government ministers could not know about individual clinical decisions and that issues like this would be covered in the promised government inquiry into the handling of the pandemic.

She said the Scottish government had charged Public Health Scotland with producing validated statistics on the number of patients tested prior to discharge, the outcome of those tests and the rationale for discharge decisions. This data should be available next month.

Sturgeon added she would set out for discussion in the chamber the remit and timescale of an inquiry, but made her frustration plain as she told Davidson that her officials were “in the teeth of a pandemic that may be accelerating again” and that it would be irresponsible to divert their efforts to a public inquiry right now.

Updated

The overall NHS sickness and absence rate for England was the highest in more than a decade during the peak period of coronavirus, figures reveal.

Data from NHS Digital published on Thursday show the rate was 6.2% in April, the highest level in the data which goes back to April 2009.

The figures showed that about 2.3m full-time equivalent (FTE) days of work across all staff groups in the NHS were lost out of a total of nearly 36.6m in April 2020.

During the same month last year, there were more than 1.4m FTE days lost out of a total of nearly 35m, a rate of 4.06%.

The figures show that every region of England except the south-west reported their highest sickness absence rates since April 2009.

London reported the highest sickness absence rate at 7.2%, while the south-west reported the lowest at 4.5%.

Ambulance trusts had the highest sickness absence rate at 7.3% followed by acute trusts, which provide services such as A&E departments, at nearly 6.5%.

NHS Providers said the variation in sickness absence by region and trusts correlated with the areas facing the biggest peaks of the coronavirus outbreak.

The most reported reason for sickness absence was anxiety, stress, depression or other psychiatric illnesses, at 20.9%.

But compared with previous data, there have been year-on-year increases in sickness absence due to chest and respiratory problems; cold, cough and flu; and infectious diseases.

There is no specific sickness absence reason for Covid-19 in the data.

Updated

Nicola Sturgeon says Scotland is not moving to the next stage of a route out of lockdown, as she announced that there have been 77 new cases of coronavirus since yesterday, the highest number of new cases in three months.

There were 27 new cases in Tayside overnight, and the outbreak there at the 2 Sisters chicken factory, Coupar Angus, has now reached 43 in total. The army’s mobile testing unit is still in place there and all 900 factory workers are urged to get tested.

Working from home remains the advice for most Scottish officer workers: Sturgeon says advising a return to non-essential offices presents “too great a risk at this time”. She adds that the impact that a full return to work could have on community transmission would make it more difficult to keep schools open.

Updated

Nicola Sturgeon confirmed Scotland would remain in phase three of her four-part plan for easing lockdown restrictions.

The first minister told MSPs: “I am not able to indicate, today, a move from phase three of our route map out of lockdown to phase four. We will remain, for now, in phase three and I must give notice today that this may well be the case beyond the next review point too.”

For Scotland to move into phase four she said ministers would have to be satisfied that “the virus is no longer considered a significant threat to public health”.

And she said the latest figures showed that “this is definitely not the case”.

Updated

Scotland has recorded the highest number of daily coronavirus cases in almost three months

Speaking during the Scottish government’s daily briefing, Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, said 19,534 people had tested positive for Covid-19 in Scotland, up by 77 from 19,457 the day before. That is the highest number of cases in almost three months.

No new coronavirus deaths had been reported in the last 24 hours, she said. A total of 2,492 patients have died in Scotland after testing positive for coronavirus.

There are 249 people in hospital with confirmed or suspected Covid-19, an increase of one in 24 hours. Of these patients, two were in intensive care - no change from the previous day.

Updated

The residents of Oldham in Greater Manchester are on tenterhooks today as they wait to hear whether they will be put in a stricter lockdown.

Sir Richard Leese, the leader of Manchester city council and deputy mayor of Greater Manchester, is on Radio Manchester’s phone-in show this lunch time arguing against further measures in Oldham. He said:

Yes Oldham and indeed Manchester now have a higher rate of infection than we would like, but unlike back in April when we had a very, very high death rate from Covid-19, by and large there are less people dying of Covid-19 than summer flu, for example.

If you look at Oldham, the number of recorded [coronavirus-related] deaths over the last month was a total of four, whereas in one week in April it got as high as 67. People aren’t going into hospital, they aren’t calling their doctors, not calling 111. It is largely younger people and it is having minimal impact.

Restrictions that reduce people’s ability to be economically active are now likely to be causing more premature deaths by quite a long way than Covid-19 is.

The infection rate in Oldham has slowed, week on week, but is still the highest in the UK, with 83.1 cases per 100,000 people in the week to 15 August, down from 107.5 a week earlier. There were 197 new infections in that time period, compared with 255 the week before.

In Manchester there were 47.6 infections per 100,000 people in the week to 15 August, up from 37.3 the week before.

Updated

More than 75,000 households in England were considered homeless or at risk of becoming so at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, government figures show.

Between January and March, 36,690 households were assessed as homeless, according to statistics from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

A further 38,450 households were assessed as being threatened with homelessness within 56 days over the same period.

The total number of households considered homeless or at risk (75,140) was 2.4% higher than the equivalent period last year. There was a greater annual rise in the number of households considered homeless – 7.6% up from the 34,110 households in the same quarter in 2019. Single households accounted for 88.4% of the increase.

Charities believe the real number may be much higher. In July, research from Shelter estimated that 227,000 adult private renters had fallen into arrears since the start of the pandemic.

Responding to the government’s latest figures, Shelter’s chief executive, Polly Neate, said: “With daily news of new job cuts and the eviction ban set to lift on Monday, the coming months are likely to see a devastating homelessness crisis unfold unless the government steps in to safeguard people’s homes. Some may even face sleeping on the streets as councils struggle to cope with the intense pressure on oversubscribed services.”

Updated

Yesterday, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, told the BBC that the government was not considering making mask-wearing compulsory in offices as Covid-19 transmission in offfices is thought to be low.

The Science Media Centre generally does a decent job getting experts to refute/confirm contentious claims made in the media, and there are many interesting responses to Hancock here.

This is a particularly helpful one, believes Greg Fell, the director of public health in Sheffield.

Keith Neal, emeritus professor of the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham, said: “Office working has an inherent basis of social distancing built in. Most workplace outbreaks have been in factories producing food where temperatures are usually kept low.

“There has been little published work from the UK identifying where people have caught infections. We do know that transmission occurs in hospitals, in care homes, households and families mixing in households along with overcrowded pubs as in Aberdeen. The risk in offices must exist but so far not been measured and can reasonably thought to be low.

“There are other risks travelling to work. Although masks are required on public transport, I have seen reports it is not being rigorously enforced. For those many more areas of the country where public transport is not an option, this will require car use. Car sharing has been suggested as a risk factor, but this would not generate many cases and these reports have also involved a shared place of work.

“Unnecessary car journeys (even if only to the station) lead to increased CO2 emissions and localised air pollution. Working from home minimises your and your family’s risk from Covid-19 and flu. Working from home will keep down the overall number of transmissions in the whole country.

“If you can work from home without any detriment then it is reasonable to carry on doing this, but if you have to go to the office the risk is minimal and can be managed to be even lower.”

Updated

The Guardian’s Community desk has been collating responses from GCSE students today who wanted to share their joy/despair (delete as appropriate).

Waseem, a 19-year-old from Oldham, said he was disappointed, having failed his English and maths for the third time.

In maths, he received a one, rather than the four (C equivalent) he was predicted, and a three in English rather than his predicted five. He was resitting after narrowly failing last year.

“Last year I was a few marks off passing, and this year I tried so hard,” he said, saying he was particularly disappointed with his maths result. “I did all the work from home on google classrooms, and my teacher said he predicted me a four.”

Waseem said he was unsure why his marks were lower than expected, but would be sitting down with his teacher to talk about his options, including another possible resit.

“I’m just confused right now,” he said.

Updated

My colleagues Pamela Duncan and Tobi Thomas from the Guardian’s data unit report discrepancies in today’s GCSE results:

A rising tide lifts all boats and this year’s U-turn from algorithm to teacher-graded marks has resulted in an increase in top grades across every subject. Some subjects, however, benefited more than others.

Of those subjects with 50,000 or more candidates, science students fared best this year. More than half of biology students (54%) enjoyed one of the top three grades in 2020, up from 43.3% in 2019, with similar changes in chemistry (up from 44.1 to 53.5%) and physics (up from 44% to 53.2%).

Three quarters of classics candidates achieved the top grade of 7 and above, compared with 64.5% of candidates in 2019.

As mentioned earlier, engineering students enjoyed the biggest bump in grades between 2019 and 2020: 2.3 times as many engineering students got a grade of 7 and above this year (11.4% in 2019 versus 26.5% in 2020).

There were also significant lifts in physical education, computing, drama and business studies.

Citizenship studies had the lowest share of the top grades awarded this year, with just over a fifth (22.3%) of students achieving the top grade of 7 and above. Nonetheless, this was still an increase in comparison with 2019 results, in which just 16.6% of candidates received one of the three top grades.

Updated

After all the uncertainty of the exams fiasco, headteachers across the country are celebrating their pupils’ GCSE success, but they say recent experiences have damaged relations with the Department for Education (DfE).

Jules White, headteacher of Tanbridge House secondary school in Horsham, West Sussex and leader of the WorthLess? education funding campaign, was with pupils this morning, watching with delight as they found out their grades.

“We had a wonderful year group,” he said. “They didn’t want to go into lockdown back in March. We should be celebrating their success today, and if they’ve had a little bit of a boost, then great. Just looking at them now, they’re really pleased. That’s what we are in it for.It’s not just about exams, it’s about young people taking the next step.”

White was highly critical of DfE leadership. “A shambolic few days has cruelly exposed the absence of effective leadership at the DfE,” he said. “Long held concerns about the department’s inability to listen meaningfully to head teachers and then act decisively and with flexibility is the main learning point from this disaster.”

He said schools faced huge future issues, including full reopening of schools in two weeks’ time, the threat of localised lockdowns and grappling with vast amounts of curriculum content before next year’s exams with so much time already lost. “Confidence amongst heads regarding the DfE’s ability to lead us with credibility is extremely low.”

Updated

It may well be GCSE day today but the fallout from the A-level grading fiasco continues.

The Welsh exams regulator says its “best estimate” is that 41.3% students will now get A* to A, compared with 29.9% when results were released on 13 August and 27% in 2019.

Qualifications Wales also said that in the estimated revised AS-level results in Wales, 29.9% of students received an A-grade – compared with 22.2% last week and 20.3% in 2019.

But grades could get higher still, said a spokesperson for Qualification Wales:

These figures do not account for cases where the AS grade will be awarded to learners at A-level where it is higher than the Centre Assessment Grade or the calculated grade. Final revised results in Wales will therefore be higher than the figures in this analysis.

The announcement follows the decision of the Welsh government to scrap moderation and rely on teacher assessments.

Updated

That’s all from me for today. Thanks for reading and commenting this morning. You’ll be in the hands of my colleague Helen Pidd, who’ll be joining you for much of the rest of the day.

Frankie Brereton from Lewes old grammar school embraces his mother, Jules, after receiving his GCSE results.
Frankie Brereton from Lewes old grammar school embraces his mother, Jules, after receiving his GCSE results. Photograph: Andrew Hasson/Getty Images

Updated

Younger people should not feel invincible as coronavirus restrictions are lifted, a World Health Organization (WHO) official has said. Dr Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, told a press briefing he was “very concerned” that under-24s were regularly appearing among new cases.

Young people are at the forefront of the Covid-19 response and they have a very powerful message to convey through their behaviour and their communication.

Low risk does not mean no risk, no one is invincible and if you do not die from Covid it may stick to your body like a tornado with a long tail. While young people are less likely to die than older people they can still be very seriously affected: this virus affects organs throughout the body.

Updated

Ignoring double science (which has the unfair advantage of a double count as it is classed as two exams), English overtook maths as the most popular subject this year followed by English literature, history and geography.

Pamela Duncan and Tobi Thomas report that the total number of people taking GCSEs rose by 2.3% this year and many subjects had increased participation. There were exceptions though, for example religious studies which, although still the seventh most popular subject, had a decrease of almost 2% in the number of students taking the course.

Just 2,792 students took engineering in 2020 (down 1.8%) but those who did take the course were rewarded. More than a quarter of those who took the subject (26.5%) were awarded a grade 7 or above this year, in comparison to just 11.4% of the grades awarded in 2019.

Statistics has the highest increase in total candidates this year in comparison with all subjects (up by just under 10%), with Spanish also faring well (up 8%).

Other than double science (which counts as two exams) English was the most popular GCSE subject this year

Updated

The prime minister, Boris Johnson, who has been on holiday during the exams crisis, has congratulated GCSE students.

I know the last few months have been tough and this isn’t how you imagined you would be finishing year 11, but you can be proud of how you helped to keep the virus under control.

You have literally saved lives through staying at home and keeping distance from others. Thank you for protecting yourselves, your families and your communities this year. And once again – congratulations and well done.

Updated

The parent of one BTec student has said the decision to withhold final grades has left his son feeling like a “second-class student”.

Hundreds of thousands of his peers are still waiting for their final grades after the exam board told schools and colleges not to release the results to pupils on Thursday. Caleb Taylor, 19, is waiting for the results of his level three BTec in computing and business.

His father, Richard, said he has been unable to enrol at his college in Gwent for next year without knowing his final grades.

I think it’s a disgrace. He feels like he is a second-class student, and BTecs are seen as less important than A-levels because they have been sorted out last. Technical qualifications shouldn’t be seen as less-than.

My son is really anxious because he doesn’t know what he will be doing next year. He plans to go to university but it is a good thing he didn’t want to go this year because he would have missed out on his space. There has just been no communication, we just don’t know what is going on.

Updated

The GCSE results are in and a first look at the data (which came to us very late) appears to show that this year’s results chaos has benefited students whose grades have risen overall.

A government/Ofqual U-turn earlier this week saw results reached by an algorithm being replaced by those issued by teachers.

The proportion of students achieving one of the three highest marks – grades 7 and above – reached 27.6%; 5.7 percentage points higher than the 2019 exam cycle.

The proportion of GCSE entries receiving the highest three grades rose from 21.9% last year to 27.6% in 2020

Updated

Parents and a student receive GCSE results at Ark academy in London.
Parents and a student receive GCSE results at Ark academy in London. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

Updated

The overall NHS sickness absence rate for England was 6.2% during the peak period of coronavirus in April; the highest monthly rate in more than a decade.

New data from NHS Digital, published on Thursday, shows that London reported the highest sickness absence rate at 7.2% while the south-west reported the lowest at 4.5%.

The figures show that every region of England except the south-west reported their highest sickness absence rates since April 2009.

Ambulance trusts had the highest sickness absence rate at 7.3% followed by acute trusts, which provide services such as A&E departments, at 6.5%.

Updated

A company run by long–term associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings has been working behind the scenes with the exams agency Ofqual on its disastrous strategy for determining A-level results, the Guardian can reveal.

Public First, a policy and research firm owned by James Frayne and Rachel Wolf, who both formerly worked for Gove, has been involved on the project with Ofqual since June after being granted a contract that was not put out to competitive tender.

Details of the contract have not been made public and Ofqual declined to say how much public money had been spent hiring Public First.

The government must put an end to the “incompetence” around the issuing of the BTec results, according to the National Education Union’s co-general secretary. Hundreds of thousands of BTec students are still waiting for their final grades after the exam board told schools and colleges not to release the results to pupils on Thursday. Mary Bousted said:

Teachers know their students better than any model or algorithm and it will be a relief to many that the grades they receive are now a fairer reflection of their achievements.

To add to the GCSE and A-level fiasco, the decision by Pearson not to issue BTec results at the 11th hour compounds the upsetting and chaotic experience for students.

Government must put an end to this incompetence and work quickly to ensure every young person gets the grades they deserve to move on to the next stages of their lives.

Updated

About one in eight of the UK workforce remain on furlough before the winding down of the job retention programme, according to official figures.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said that its latest fortnightly survey into the impact of coronavirus on UK firms revealed that 12% of the workforce is still furloughed.

It also said that 10% of surveyed businesses said they have a “moderate” risk of insolvency, with 1% of firms saying the risk was “severe”.

Updated

Students at Bristnall Hall academy in Oldbury, West Midlands, receive their GCSE results.
Students at Bristnall Hall academy in Oldbury, West Midlands, receive their GCSE results. Photograph: Jacob King/PA

Updated

The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, said students receiving their GCSE results today should feel “incredibly proud” of what they have achieved “in the face of immense challenge and uncertainty”.

This is an exciting day and young people now can look forward to taking their next steps, whether that is returning to schools and colleges in September to do A-levels or our brand new T-levels, or taking one of the many other routes available like starting an apprenticeship.

I also want to pay a special tribute to teachers and school leaders this year, who have shown dedication, resilience and ingenuity to support their students to get to this moment.

Updated

The Stormont education minister, Peter Weir, congratulated GCSE students.

These outcomes reflect the assessments made by the people who know you best: your teachers.

I appreciate the past few months have been particularly challenging but our young people have demonstrated a determination not to let this pandemic put their lives on hold. Today, they have been awarded qualifications which reflect their hard work and will enable them to move forward confidently with their future plans.

Teachers and school leaders had a very difficult job to do and I want to express my appreciation for their hard work and commitment to their students in challenging circumstances.

Updated

Northern Irish results improve

Teacher-assessed GCSE results have improved across all grades in Northern Ireland.

On Thursday morning, 29,000 students in Northern Ireland received results from the examinations body CCEA.

In terms of grades, 37.1% of students achieved grade A* to A, up by 5.7 percentage points on last year. The proportion of students receiving A* to C grades also increased, by 7.6 percentage points to 89.4%.

And the numbers receiving A*-G grades increased by 0.9 percentage points to 99.7%.

Updated

At Burnage academy for boys in Manchester, pupils have begun opening their GCSE results, many of which are in line with last year’s results despite teacher-assessed grades being awarded.

Among them, 16-year-old Mohammed Atif, who achieved eight 9s (A*s) and one 8 (A), said he was conscious that because results were not achieved based on exam results, they could be lowered in value in the minds of future educators and employers.

I think a lot of people are worried because we’re the Covid year of results, that might downgrade the value of our results. It’s a bit sad but, at the same time, they must understand that it was an odd year that we’ve been through so I don’t think that should hinder the value of grades that much.

Mohammed is planning to attend Manchester grammar school to study biology, chemistry and maths, with hopes of going to university to study medicine.

The academy’s deputy headteacher, Helen Carter, said that, while this results day felt a bit “flat” after the debacle that ended with the government’s U-turn on Monday, she was delighted for students.

I’m pleased that we’re able to give the centre-assessed grades because I was very fearful that the algorithm was going to be detrimental. We’re teaching pupils, many of whom are from deprived areas and postcodes, and that would have had a really negative impact. That’s not what the boys would’ve deserved.

Updated

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), is expecting staff to have challenging conversations with GCSE students unhappy with results.

He said one sixth form college was threatened with a solicitor and had to deal with abusive parents” after “all hell broke loose” over the colleges’ estimated grades for A-levels last week. Speaking yesterday – before GCSE results day, Barton said:

That will be repeated tomorrow I guess. I think people are expecting difficult conversations. It will be around a misunderstanding of: ‘This is an individual teacher. She didn’t like me. She has therefore marked me down’.

Updated

Traditional A*-G GCSE grades have been scrapped and replaced in England with a 9-1 system, with 9 the highest result. A 4 is broadly equivalent to a C grade, and a 7 broadly equivalent to an A.

Students receiving GCSE results this summer will get numerical grades for all their subjects as all courses have now moved over to the new grading system.

Updated

Top GCSE grades surge to record high in England

The proportion of GCSE entries in England awarded top grades has hit a record high after a U-turn meant results could be based on teachers’ estimated grades amid cancelled exams.

More than one in four GCSE entries in England scored one of the three top grades this year, up from just over a fifth last summer, figures from the exams regulator Ofqual show.

The proportion receiving the top grades – at least a seven or an A grade – is a record high based on available data following the decision to award grades based on teachers’ assessments, rather than an algorithm.

More than three in four entries were awarded at least a four or a C grade in England this summer, which is up 8.9 percentage points on last year when 67.1% achieved the grades, data from Ofqual shows.

Updated

Share your reaction and experiences

We want to hear from students, parents and teachers, about how grades have been affected. If you’re getting your results today, whatever your story or what you are planning next, we want to hear from you.

You can get in touch by filling in the form here. The form is encrypted and your responses are only seen by the Guardian.

You can also contact us via WhatsApp by clicking here or adding the contact +44(0)7867825056.

Gibb also confirmed that concerns the algorithm used to determine grades could impact poorer pupils were expressed directly to him. While he said he decided to hold a meeting to discuss the fears, a plan ministers now admit was seriously flawed still went ahead.

Asked about reports in the Times that suggested Sir Jon Coles – a former director general at the Department for Education – wrote to Williamson early last month to express concerns about the algorithm used by Ofqual, Gibb told Today:

He spoke to me about it and he was concerned about the model and he was concerned that it would disadvantage particularly children from poorer backgrounds. And so I called a meeting therefore with the independent regulator, with Ofqual, to discuss in detail those very concerns.

Gibb has been seeking to defend the model used this morning; distinguishing it from the algorithm used to apply it.

Updated

Tory colleague refuses to back beleaguered education secretary

The threat to Gavin Willamson’s position is not abating.

The Scottish Tory leader, Douglas Ross, has refused to give him his backing, saying he should “reflect on what happened”.

Ross, who had called for the Scottish education secretary John Swinney to lose his job after his own exams U-turn, suggested the English minister should have taken action quicker once the problems in Scotland became apparent. He has told BBC Radio Scotland:

I think Gavin Williamson and the government and the Department for Education will be reflecting on why did they not see the problem that the SNP had to deal with as a result of their actions in Scotland.

Asked whether Williamson should quit, Ross said:

That is a decision for Gavin Williamson. It’s a decision for the prime minister, if he continues to have the trust of the prime minister.

I’m not here to say in your report that I think Gavin Williamson has done a great job and he should continue. I think he has to reflect on what happened to so many pupils in England, students who were concerned for four days, because we had the exact same up here in Scotland for a week.

Updated

Gibb’s claim that ministers believed the BTecs would not need to be changed does not entirely hold water because it relies on his assertion that they were already to be based entirely on a system similar to that ultimately used to calculate A-levels: teacher-assessed grades.

The schools minister told Today:

These BTecs are not affected by the same standardisation process as GCSEs and A-levels ... they are based on marks by coursework of the teachers ... and that’s why we didn’t feel you needed to make adjustments initially to the BTecs because they were based on teacher assessment. And that is where we had moved GCSEs and A-levels.

But the feedback that Pearsons have been receiving since Monday was that, given that there was going to be an uplift in the grades of GCSEs and A-level, it was only fair that there was some form of uplift on the BTec qualifications.

While the exam board confirmed last night that the BTecs were largely to be awarded on that basis, it said there was actually to be some standardisation based on past performance.

Although we generally accepted centre-assessment grades for internal (ie coursework) units, we subsequently calculated the grades for the examined units using historical performance data with a view of maintaining overall outcomes over time.

Our review will remove these Pearson calculated grades and apply consistency across teacher assessed internal grades and examined grades that students were unable to sit.

Updated

Gibb has said no change to the Btecs was envisaged before last night because they were already teacher-assessed and were therefore thought to be inherently in line with the amended method of calculating A-levels, to which they are equivalent.

But he has told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the exam board decided it needed to look again at the results because the A-levels U-turn had resulted in an uplift in grades that could mean Btec students would now be disadvantaged.

Updated

Referring to reports that Ofqual was warned at least a month ago of flaws in the exams algorithm, the shadow education secretary Kate Green has said:

Gavin Williamson was warned again and again about the problems with the grading algorithm, and each time, he did nothing.

This endless pattern of incompetence is no way to run a country. His failure to listen to warnings and to act on them risked thousands of young people being robbed of their futures.

It is time for full transparency. The Department for Education must now publish all correspondence to and from the secretary of state in which concerns about this algorithm were discussed, as a matter of urgency.

Young people deserve to know how they came to be let down so badly.

Gibb apologised to GCSE and A-level students for the “pain and the anxiety” they felt prior to this week’s exam grading U-turn. He has told BBC Breakfast in a separate interview:

To those hundreds of thousands of young people receiving their GCSE grades and the A-level students receiving recalculated grades, I will say this to them, congratulations on what you have achieved.

But also how sorry I am for the pain, the anxiety and the uncertainty that they will have suffered as a consequence of the grading issues we encountered last week. And to reassure them that we are doing everything we can to put these matters right.

Updated

Announcing the changes to the A-level calculations earlier this week, the education secretary Gavin Williamson said:

It became apparent over the weekend that we needed to do more and I made the recommendation that we move to centre-assessed grades. I’m not going to sit by and see injustices done, I’m going to take action. That’s what I did. That’s what I’ve done today; it’s the right thing to do.

In other interviews on Tuesday, Williamson said there were “large numbers of youngsters … [who] wanted to see action taken, that’s what I’ve done”. A statement from the Department for Education later acknowledged that it was Ofqual that had taken the decision to shift to predicted grades, not Williamson.

Gibb insisted that Williamson had not been trying to take credit for the decision, telling Sky News:

What he was saying is that he recommended to government the decision of the regulator.

The schools minister Nick Gibb has admitted he cannot give a firm date for the release of BTec results, saying that they will “hopefully” be out next week. He has told Sky News:

‘As soon as possible’ is what the exam board has said and I anticipate that that will be next week.

He said claims he had been more interested in avoiding grade inflation than in devising a truly fair system were untrue.

Updated

Disadvantaged pupils will be the biggest winners from Thursday’s GCSEs results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with more likely to gain good passes and see a narrowing in their attainment gap with better-off children.

One prediction forecast a nearly 10 percentage point increase in pupils in England achieving a grade 4 – equivalent to the bottom of an old C grade.

Close to 550,000 year 11 pupils in England will receive their GCSE grades on Thursday, which for the first time will be entirely awarded by assessment rather than examination after the government scrapped exams amid the Covid pandemic in March.

Amended GCSEs to be released, but BTec results will be delayed, students told

Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage.

It’s exam results day. Or, at least, it’s supposed to be.

But, for many thousands of students pursuing vocational qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it’s another day of chaos and confusion after the examinations board Pearson announced another last-minute U-turn only hours before results were supposed to be released.

It said yesterday evening that it had decided to change to the way the BTec results are decided and base the final results on internal assessments and marks. While that means many people could be awarded higher grades amid concerns the original plans were disadvantaging the brightest students, it also means they will not be ready for today.

It is just the latest debacle linked to the plans to replace examinations cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic and comes only days after the embarrassing A-level results fiasco, over which there have been calls for the education secretary Gavin Williamson to resign.

Labour said it was “appalling that thousands of young people should face further confusion and uncertainty” and demanded that Williamson set a deadline for the release of results.

Many GCSE students, however, will be getting their grades today after it was decided earlier in the week that – like A-levels – they too should now be awarded based on grades predicted by teachers.

As a result, disadvantaged pupils will be the biggest winners from Thursday’s GCSEs results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with more likely to gain good passes and see a narrowing in their attainment gap with better-off children.

Updated

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“I was a good bass player, and I am proud of my Celebrity Skin work, but oh my God, it changed my level of musicianship forever”: Melissa Auf der Maur on what she learned from playing with Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins
Auf der Maur joined the Pumpkins in October 1999 following a five-year stint with Hole
Guitar World
Guitar World
The View guest host Sheryl Underwood addresses feud with former co-star Sharon Osbourne
‘I still believe there's some love between me and Sharon Osbourne,’ Underwood said about her former ‘The Talk’ co-host
The Independent UK
The Independent UK
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