Remember......govern ment promise of Computers and Internet for all students that need them....????

Yes, we do, but why did the government make promises it probably had no intention of fulfilling? There's been loads of pious posturing about education being so important, but the reality is very different.

Headteachers were ordered to make sure that online/distance learning resources are available. Teachers were told last week to develop materials for the next half term - on top of everything else they've had to do.

Laptops in the schools I know about have only been made available to Year 10/11 (ie exam) pupils on free school meals. There's no money to make sure they have an internet connection. Very few schools can afford to subsidise the catch up and mentoring programs, so won't be using them.

The idea of "bubbles" is nonsense. Now only those pupils sitting next to anybody proving positive are being sent home and the parents aren't told if somebody in the class tests positive, but of course they hear on the grapevine and worried parents are keeping their children at home.

Random testing in primary schools is showing a big jump in asymptomatic pupils, which is worrying. Although the young pupils themselves probably won't be badly affected, they are silent carriers to other family members and friends. Meanwhile, ONS figures yesterday showed that secondary pupils are the second biggest group of those testing positive.

The twins were each given a brand new computer in April along with some school work to do, as well as the headmaster calling weekly with his wife's home-made cakes. We couldn't fault the way they were treated.

The headmaster used to call them his favourite family and D had said he was a really nice man too. Granted, this took place only a couple of weeks after their dad's funeral so that could have had a bearing on how extra efficient things were.

Wait! Let me think.....can this be anything to do with all the billions having to be spent because we have a killer virus on the loose!?

Apparently the Government has said that schools can rotate the laptops they already have - because they will make sure the number of children self isolating at any one time always exactly matches the number of laptops available. Maybe they’ve designed an algorithm that worked this out ( no doubt designed by a mate of Cummings for a bargain fee of £10, 00000000( add noughts as you wish , no one in No 10 is counting).

And the promised Covid Marshals who were going to make sure guidelines were followed on public transport etc?
Nothing came of them either.

(I recently heard a radio phone in with bus drivers saying that it was hopeless trying to get some of the public to wear masks.)

We should try to compile a list of all of the lies and broken 'promises'.

Did I imagine things but I thought that as from last Thursday schools are now legally obliged to provide distance learning to those that need it?

I don't know why anyone expected anything better of them. Tories don't 'do' looking after the nation's citizens. They use the same 'self help', 'poverty is self imposed', 'don't expect the state to support you', narrative as does the USA (whoever suggested recently that we are European in outlook rather than American, was being optimistic...) and their current 'support' goes badly against the grain.

Since the 2019 election we have had it forcibly borne in on us that lying is their modus operandi when it comes to doing anything verging on decency and these recent failures are just more examples.

Never trust a tory ?

And while we're at it, what on Earth happened to the promised mentoring and Summer catch-up scheme?