Yesterday’s school attendance figures show an average attendance of 82.9% - down from 86% the week before. Of course these average figures mask huge regional variations.

22% of secondary school pupils were absent. Again, this national figure masks huge regional variations. The government has been asked, but has not yet given, the regional figures although it has this data.

Secondary school pupils now have infection rates which are 51 times higher than they were in September.

SAGE identifies secondary age pupils as the biggest transmitter of COVID into households.

Many schools and colleges are at crisis point with staff absences because of COVID isolation. At a recent meeting with a govt minister we were told to tell our members to ‘hold their nerve’!

And now we learn that the four tiers of intervention have been abandoned - removing the option for rotas which, in many areas would bring some order and continuity to pupils’ education.

School leaders and their staff are at breaking point. They are holding the fort without social distancing in schools, without adequate cleaning and with staffing budgets shot to pieces.

Why is it obvious to everyone else but not to @GavinWilliamson and @NickGibbUK that the situation is unsustainable? (I think that they know this but they can’t admit it.) No 10 very interested in education apparently....

I predict another exams crisis, on a bigger scale than this summer’s crisis, next summer. After Christmas the parents of GCSE and A level students will realise how little time is left and how much time their children have missed from school.

You would have thought that ministers would have learned after the battering they got in the summer - even from usually friendly newspapers. Apparently, they have not learned anything - or they cannot act because the decisions are being made in No 10.