I understand there's a split within govt over how big the controversial new levy on international students should be The q at the moment is whether it should be 6% or a £1,000 fee Different depts & unis would favour one over the other....read more below👇 www.politicshome.com/news/article...

I have to say, I find this letter completely baffling for a number of reasons:

Surprised how well #celebritytraitors worked, esp as one of the major designed asymmetries in the final - whether the original Traitors have recruited or not and therefore uncertainty over how many are left - couldn’t have happened. It *ought* to have made a very simple Faithful 3-2 Traitors ending

Too bloody right. One of the richest clubs in the world can pay for their own new stadium. Why on earth should taxpayer socialise costs and let the club and the owners take future profits?

Staggering that Today cuts away live from the CX speaking, in a specifically chosen prime time slot, to ask two random Labour MPs what they think about is in the speech *that we can’t hear because they’ve cut away from it*

Wonderful win for England’s women cricketers. Great to see on a day that had no other sport whatsoever to distract from it.

Another great real time thread from John on the DfE perm sec evidence. The below is simultaneously staggering, and not - why would DfE have this data? A great example of @rcolvile.bsky.social database state again - it’s much easier to implement things where data collection and segmentation exists

This is a fascinating thread (albeit you may get slight PTSD remembering all of the issues from 5 years ago)

Not even in retirement, but when we’re on holiday in the UK, I ask my kids to look up the details of tiny village primary schools we go past, and I see how full they are, and wonder about local economies, labour force, and school provision. My 12 yo is an expert navigator of the GIAS website. WHAT?

Fair play for getting headlines out of dropping a mythical target for HE entry, briefing it as being anti HE, and in fact setting a new target for tertiary participation. Piss off the people who ought to be happy and make happy the people you want to irritate?

Big shift here - that’s about £5bn all in (and a big political priority) shifting from DfE to DWP

Pet parrots which typically live alone (whilst those in the wild live in large flocks) were given the technology to call each other. They would use it for up to three hours a day, and developed favourite friends 💔 on.ft.com/3K05vhS

Has a technologist ever had a correct opinion about education?

My learned colleague reminds me that from 1995 to 2001 we had the department of education and employment, pre DWP…..

Dedicated uni minister coming I think. Skills white paper is, erm, now tricky. And a tertiary system seems a long way away right now….. (Plus we’re almost certainly going to have funding for pre 16 and post 16 now split between DfE and DWP as funding agencies)

Britain on verge of civil war: update

That debut was more Coventry Gyokeres than Sporting Gyokeres

That’s the quickest fight I’ve seen since AJ early days

Of all the terrible AI forced on us, I think Meta AI on Facebook may be the absolute worst

You can hear them crying in Turin

A brilliant example of both the age bifurcation in politics, but also why we shouldn’t treat all age viewpoints equally. I’m much more interested on this question on what 18-24 yos think (who unsurprisingly prefer HE) than what 50-64s and 65+ almost certainly mis-) think about it.

Spursy

A review of Nick Gibb+Rob Peal's new book. I liked it. I am v sure many other people won't. Whether you do or don't like what he did, there's a lot to learn for anyone who cares about how edu policy is made, as well as explaining why Gibb did what he did jonathansimons.substack.com/p/welcome-ba...

Does anyone want to hire me as a penalty coach? Top tip, if you leather it, the keeper has less time to judge where it’s going to go…..

So far the #lfc pre season friendly has seen massive queues to get in pre kick off as they evacuated the stadium, followed by the whole Annie Road end running out of food by half way through the two games. Spectacularly well organised.

That’s some clutch penalty taking from what my family insist on calling QPRs Chloe Kelly

Interesting and neat graph - and good because you can discuss several things: - does this mean that housing wealth is overindexed on as a function of wealth of cities? - would we expect Manc to grow more unequal as it got richer? - is the fact it is poorer than London a big UK problem w 2nd cities?

Genuinely one of the smartest things the department can do. Inflation is reasonably predictable as are trends on recruitment and retention. If schools and trusts know their income (which they do) and also their major costs for the next 3 years, it helps planning and efficiencies immensely.

I don’t care what Duckett’s nominal test average is, I can’t remember the last time he and Crawley and Pope all got a decent score

Wonderfully arch Louvre commentary - the French consul “obtained authorisation” to take part of the Parthenon friezes; others “were taken” by Lord Elgin

Next time the TBI *is* involved in pulling together a slide deck on “how to do comms”, they should probably include this. With a cross through it and a sad face, on how not to do it.

BBC execs on a jolly 🤝 Centrist Dads 🤝 BlueSky followers PULP

Oh good - a pointless check for a pointless requirement that will result in pointless no consequence! All to please one man.

This is what the sector should be worried about. Not just that it’s a half formed idea with no real clue on elasticity of demand, but that - like the apprenticeship levy - a decent chunk of it gets hoovered up and spent elsewhere by the man from the ministry

NEW on Wonkhe: New research from Public First shows that every UK resident is better off due to international students. Charlie Jeffery explains why it’s vital this message cuts through buff.ly/4wBI7vx

Industrial strategy - v early thoughts (focussed on the skills/ R+D/ education bits only) Firstly, this is better than I worried it would be. Early indications of the GP, with the “priority sectors” encompassing vast swathes of the economy, made me worry about blancmange. This is more focused

Great advert. Just really captures the frustration. You wake up in the morning, you've got to read all the Sunday papers, the kids are running round, you've got to mow the lawn, wash the car, and you think "Sunday, bloody Sunday!"

Honestly the Puritanism of Britons sometimes. If it ain’t hurting, it ain’t working. Fatties must be shamed. No using modern medical miracles to help improve quality of life. From the people who brought you “don’t medicalise birth”…..

Why do they look like they’re about to drop that difficult third album, which shows that they’ve grown up in the industry and the music now has a more serious and downbeat vibe

Quite so, China - can you *imagine* the downsides of all your tech and IP leaving your country……

Pushing my infant in the swings next to a couple of strangers and making new parent small talk including how they like singing to theirs: realising after they left that it was Jamie Cullum and Sophie Dahl

You really can’t do a bleeding stump thing 48 hours before the SR….surely even the HO has settled now……

Those former solid blue seats across great swathes of the south east now either held by or threatened by the Lib Dems, falling away from a mixture of Boris / Brexit / Covid - who needs those, eh

Genuinely mind blowing stat in this piece - 24% of the entire UK’s research output in AI is done in partnership with China

This is a great thread (and public administration is sadly under appreciated)

One reason Universities can't expand more is their own faculty are the most NIMBY people imaginable and block expansion efforts

Everything in this article about AI was said about the Internet and turned out to be wrong. It must be clear to even AI enthusiasts that it won't be an equal opportunities machine. Those knowing more will be the most effective users of it. We still need schools. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05...

Well look, at least the president is making these large scale changes in a very thoughtful and fully informed way