Originally posted on WONKHE on Monday, 25 January 2021We’ve been here before. But in skills policy we’ve been everywhere before. Putting employers at the heart of the system and committing to high quality education and training are not new. These have been objectives...

Andy Westwood sets out the not-insignificant challenges that the government now faces in deciding what it wants from universities after the pandemic.

We have lost a lot of freedoms in the past few weeks. But remember, we still have some control over our lives.

All of a sudden, many of us have found ourselves in the novel position of being a home-educator. From a personal perspective, the past few weeks have been fraught with tears (mine and my son’s) and the reward of lots of treats (movies and sweets). I am currently the Head of Initial Teacher Education at the University of Manchester and have been involved in education for over 25 years. On that basis, you may assume that I have got this home education lark ‘nailed’. I haven’t!

Sir Cary Cooper, 50th Anniversary Professor of Organisational Psychology and Health, shares his top tips for working from home.

“To govern is to choose” said Nigel Lawson, the former Conservative Chancellor. And this Budget is where the government of Boris Johnson really begins and where he must make choices about his real priorities as Prime Minister

The Year of the Rat has not started well. In China, over 10,000 people have been infected by the Coronavirus, and hundreds have died. Things don’t look great in the UK either. In London, East Asians report feeling stereotyped as agents of disease, creating a hostile environment for them. In Sheffield, a Chinese student walking towards the University was verbally abused about wearing a mask. Anxiety is high.

Getting Brexit done might have been the dominant theme in December’s General Election but ‘levelling up’ the economy across all parts of the UK has quickly become the most important domestic challenge for the new Conservative Government. Of course this is rather easier said than done.

There is plenty of evidence, articles, blogs, newspaper stories attempting to debunk the myths about the ‘financial’ value of Humanities and yet the negative discourse stubbornly remains.