Gavin williamson

Gavin Williamson’s A-level U-turn may have quietened the protestors but it has only added to the confusion. The education secretary’s change of heart to allow students their teacher predicted grades, rather than those generated by an algorithm, means there could be an extra 60,000 students now entitled to a place at their first-choice university – and universities could be contractually obliged to accept them. But will there be enough places? When pupils originally received their results on 13 August, universities (not assuming a government U-turn was on the cards) started sorting through the offers they had made to students, accepting and rejecting some, and offering new places to others. But only four

In a sign of how worried the government is about youth unemployment, it will – quiet literally – pay firms to hire 16 to 24 year olds. But, as I say in the magazine this week, these government-funded jobs can only be a short-term fix. Any medium-term solution is going to require fixing post-16 education. A third of British graduates are in non-graduate jobs. The government subsidises this failing system The expansion of higher education has not worked out as intended; the 50 per cent target for pupils going to university has been hit, but too many students are doing courses that don’t represent value for money. Research from the