Teenager earning GCSEs and other qualifications despite pandemic-disrupted schooling deserve congratulations.
So politicians and educationalists discussing grades should not undermine their success.
Yet the exposed widening of society’s inequalities is a cause for serious concern.
What was a gulf between pupils in fee-charging private schools and those on free school meals is now a chasm.
The fact that Covid-19 has entrenched this unfairness underlines how little this Conservative Government values most of the people.
The significance of the Prime Minister blocking the £15billion catch-up plan proposed by England’s education recovery commissioner, Kevan Collins, is now more obvious than ever: Johnson just doesn’t care.
A royal storm
Buckingham Palace may have thought it could batten down the hatches and sail through the sex abuse scandal engulfing the Duke of York but recent events must be causing a royal rethink.
With Britain’s most senior police officer declaring “no one is above the law” and the Prince of Wales believing there will be no return to public life for his brother, this crisis is deepening for Prince Andrew personally and for the Royal Family as a whole.
Unless the Duke is able to rebut the allegations and is shown to have co-operated with the FBI, this controversy risks overshadowing the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee next year.
Her Majesty, an elderly widow who rarely puts a foot wrong in public, surely deserves better from the rest of her family.
Una’s legacy
TILL Death Us Do Part star Una Stubbs, who has died aged 84, leaves an unrivalled legacy of laughter.
She starred in some of the best-loved comedies and other shows on British television from the 1960s right through to the 2010s.
We will treasure our memories of a woman as entertaining in real life as she was on TV.
