Strong agree, it's excellent. Thanks for sharing.

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Yes, overall (not just here) we seem to be adjusting employment for PAYE, sticking with LFS self employment. Then there's the hours stuff last week. Basically it's hard to measure things anyway, people have stopped answering, and splitting the pandemic effect on responses v reality is v difficult!

Personally I think part of the issue is a decline in the cost of e.g. polling etc and increase in range of outlets (which means you'll get at least some coverage somewhere). Coupled with funding tightness which makes larger & longer funding needed for more in depth research tougher to find.

Good news & something we've long argued for. 1 in 4 NEETs receives incapacity benefits. Hopefully some access will also be opened to young people not on benefits (the other 50% of NEETs) who've been NEET for some time, when referred by a trusted body like a local authority.

A productive day already as the nightmare of last years queue is forgotten and Oasis tickets for next year are secured! Now to try and find a hotel…

Thank you for writing this - I was sure we'd done something similar before but couldn't properly recall!

Is it just me or did we not do this (applied GCSEs) in the 2000s? May or may not be a good idea, but creating a new qualification is never (on its own) the answer people seem to think it is.

I'm sure numbers will ramp up somewhat. But foundation apprenticeships are not actually apprenticeships & have always felt like a solution in search of a problem. We do need good pre-apprenticeship training mind you - whole apprenticeship system needs getting back on track.