There has been a sharp rise in pupils sent home from school in England because of Covid, according to the latest official figures.

They showed that more than 375,000 pupils - about one in 20 - were out of school for Covid-related reasons, up by more than 130,000 in a week.

The Department for Education figures show the highest number of Covid-related absences since the return to school in March, with 5% of children out of school, up from 3.3% the previous week.

• 15,000 pupils at home who are confirmed Covid cases
• 24,000 suspected cases
• 279,000 self-isolating due to potential contact in school
• 57,000 self-isolating due to potential contact in the community

"The government simply does not appear to have a grip on this situation," said Paul Whiteman of the National Association of Head Teachers, warning of rising disruption. "It is clear that a different approach is needed in the autumn term," said Geoff Barton of the ASCL head teachers' union. But he complained that so far the government's proposals are only "vague aspirations".

I was just reading about the amount of pupils absent from school - its shocking. Also, the amount of schools that are advertising for staff (general staff, not teachers) is awful.

It is good that Scotland exited Euro 2020 early.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-57667163

It is good that Scotland exited Euro 2020 early.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-57667163

Nearly 2,000 Covid cases in Scotland have been linked to people watching Euro 2020 football matches.

Public Health Scotland said two thirds of the 1,991 cases were people who travelled to London for Scotland's game with England on 18 June.

This included 397 fans who were inside Wembley for the match.

No surprise there then Idiots.

There has been a lot of talk about the mixing prompted by watching football being a cause of spread of the virus in Scotland.

It is an easy target given the images of people together in stadiums and fanzone sites.

But the problem with this data is it does not provide the answer to that.

It is contact tracing data used to establish who should be asked to isolate because they may be a close contact of an infected person.

It does not tell you where the individual caught the virus - just where they had been when they were infectious.

So this tells us that 6% of positive cases during this period attended a match, Fanzone, someone's home or the pub to watch a game of football.

The fact that people were out enjoying Scotland's first tournament for 23 years is no surprise.