This is the thirty-seventh of a series of bulletins produced by ISE to update members on key data and policy on Covid-19. This covers the period 03/12/2020-09/12/2020.

You can access all of the Covid-19 bulletins on ISE insights.

Latest Covid-19 data

Data taken from Wikipedia and from the government’s Covid-19 dashboard.

The UK has now had over 1.7 million identified Covid-19 cases and 73,125 deaths (with Covid on the death certificate). The R rate is estimated to be between 0.8 and 1 with the daily infection rate falling by -3%-1%. The second wave has peaked with both new cases and the number of deaths starting to fall.

Covid news

• Although Covid cases are falling, the number of cases varies massively across the country. But why is Covid worse in the North?
• A number of vaccines have been approved. The first has arrived in UK hospitals. It will be rolled out over the next few months. However they are expected to only have a marginal impact on the number of cases and hospital admissions in the early months of 2021.

Education

• The government has announced extra measures to ensure the fairness of GCSEs and A levels in 2021 (see the announcement from the government and more details and analysis on the plan). But there is ongoing concern about regional disparities in school attendance and about whether the ‘catch up’ funding is really working.
• The government has issued new guidance for universities to help them to deal with Covid in 20201 (see more analysis of this from WONKHE).
• New polling on higher education students’ views on Covid-19 suggests that over half of students are concerned about the return to campus in January.

The economy

• By September the UK’s GDP was down 8.2% on where it had been in February. The impact of the recession so far has been strongly sectoral.
• The Covid-driven recession is likely to push 2 million families into poverty.
• Covid has been driving wages down internationally with the UK one of the worst affected.

The student labour market

• The major summary of the graduate labour market What do graduates do? has been released this week.
• Advice for graduates on how to respond to the current labour market. Including new data on the graduate jobs that receive the fewest applications.
• Charlie Ball looks at what the future of the graduate labour market might hold.
• How employers should work with schools despite the lockdown.

Changes to working life

• Despite the vaccine, it looks like Zoom and other videoconferencing applications are here to stay. Paul Redmond gives his take on the new world of work.

Employer insights

Insights gathered from ISE employer ‘town halls’ and other interactions over the last week.

• Some organisations have been revising their recruiting targets upward for this year. But there are also some signs that there has been a drop in the diversity of applicants.
• There is some interest in Kickstart from employers, but also signs that a lot of employers are hanging back to see how it goes.