Newyddion

As Wales seeks to navigate a safe path out of the coronavirus lockdown, one of the biggest challenges for the Welsh Government is how to re-open the rural economy whilst avoiding a surge of new cases in the countryside and panicking an anxious rural population. First Minister Mark Drakeford has signaled that restrictions on the…

The impact of Covid-19 on the economy and the world of work is unprecedented: full or partial lockdown measures are affecting approximately 80 per cent of the global workforce, with the harshest effects falling disproportionately on unprotected workers and those working in the informal economy[1]. For trade unions, the Covid-19 pandemic has cast light on…

Wales is in the process of undertaking a major overhaul of its national curriculum. Until recently, the curriculum largely resembled that put in place by the 1988 Education Reform Act. The new Curriculum for Wales, based on the Successful futures for all review by Graham Donaldson (2015), entails a radical move away from the traditional…

GCSE exams were due to take place over the next few weeks in Wales, but have been cancelled due to COVID-19. In the second of our blogs about the impact of the pandemic on young people’s education I look at the replacement of formal examinations with teacher assessments. As qualifications bodies will be relying more…

Empty supermarket shelves have been a scary symptom of the COVID-19 crisis. From daily staples to sneaky snacks, we’re running low. Those shelves reveal something we don’t normally need to think about: here in Wales, our dinners depend on imported food, supply chains, and distribution networks. Could panic at the shops have been averted if…

Those of us in WISERD engaged in education research have real worries about the impact of the Coronavirus on the welfare and progress of children and young people. Some are rightly concerned about the impact on young people’s physical and mental health. But here we want to concentrate on the potential effect of the response…

  Catherine Calderwood, forced to resign as Scotland’s chief medical officer, is far from the only city dweller to have caused controversy by flouting lockdown rules to visit her second home in the countryside. Resentment over “coronavirus holidays” is rising. The Covid-19 crisis has prompted some to seek to escape the city. Green spaces are…

Our understanding of how COVID-19 is moving through populations is still developing and the lack of reliable data means we are largely limited to case fatality estimates and we can only best guess the infection fatality rate. However, it is clear that the risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID19 has a sharp age gradient….

This week, hundreds of thousands of volunteers reported for duty and have started helping the NHS in its fight against coronavirus. The public’s response in volunteering to assist the NHS has been one of the most positive reactions to the current coronavirus crisis. In particular, over 250,000 people living in England signed up to volunteer to provide help for…

I have followed WISERD’s civil society project with great interest over the years. There is much for civil society organisations to learn from and to reflect upon in Wales as elsewhere. Yet in all of WISERD’s work there was a gap – and that was on think tanks. I was therefore delighted when WISERD asked…