The Guardian spent time at Oasis Academy Hadley, where more than half of pupils are in poverty but ambitions are high

‘Really worrying’: social problems driving rise in home schooling in UK

“It’s the biggest story, mark my words. I think it’s really worrying. There are going to be dead children.” Zoë Thompson is not a drama queen. She studied physics at King’s College London, and thought she would work for Nasa. In fact, she went into teaching and has been principal of a large academy in a tough corner of north-east London for six years. In that time she has seen it all, but the surge in the number of children being taken out of school by parents on the pretext of home education is alarming, she says.

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Four years ago, about 11.7 million UK employees were furloughed, their jobs and wages protected by a government scheme. Those who had just changed job were left out – and that hardship still affects them today

In March 2020, Mark Edwards was excited to start a new job running a venue that hosted weddings and hospitality events. Before that, the 47-year-old had been working as a general manager at an independent group of hotels for the past nine years. He was living with his partner and dog in Norwich. “My life was on track. I felt everything was in my hands, but that flipped on its head,” he says.

Just as he started his new job, Covid-19 swept across the country. As the country went into lockdown – almost exactly four years ago – and the hospitality industry shut down, Edwards’ new employer sent everyone home. Most people in this situation were able to claim furlough, but Edwards was one of 300,000 “ new starters ” – workers who had started a job in February or March 2020, but weren’t on their company’s payroll in time to make the furlough scheme’s cut-off date. He ended up being out of work for a whole year, with a mortgage to pay and only six months of jobseeker’s allowance available. He spent £25,000 trying to support his household and keep up with mortgage payments. “It changed everything,” he says. “My entire life plan changed … I’ve recovered in terms of jobs but not recovered from losing 25k. I’ve not got it back.”

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After years of hard gigging, the comedian of the year finalist and pun champion is finally breaking through, thanks to his intoxicating mix of surreal standup and social justice

In comedian Kev Mud’s home in Cornwall, a caravan overlooking Porthcothan Bay, he has a mountain of DVDs stashed in a corner. There’s Hitchcock, skateboarding films, Rugrats and Fraggle Rock. “It might be a bit weird for some guy living in a caravan on top of the cliffs to have a load of kids’ DVDs,” he says. “But there’s nothing alarming going on. It’s just sometimes you don’t want to watch a Swedish noir about suicides from a bridge. Sometimes, you just want a talking bear.”

Mud started collecting them during lockdown, after he moved here from Leicester. “The DVDs were me catastrophising – there’s always catastrophe going on inside my head,” the 37-year-old continues, pausing to take a sip of his favourite concoction – Horlicks, milk powder and chai. “I’ll go through these periods, ‘What happens if I have to live without the internet?’”

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Group working with Labour and Lib Dem MPs oppose government’s move to introduce harsher measures

Rough sleeping could be fully decriminalised after 200 years under proposals from rebel Conservative MPs to repeal legislation dating from the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars.

A group of Tories working with Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs want to strip out proposed and existing legislation that criminalises homelessness.

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Police in England and Wales to be given powers to fine homeless people deemed to be causing a ‘nuisance’

Ministers are facing a revolt from their own MPs over plans to criminalise homelessness in upcoming legislation.

Under proposals that form part of the UK government’s flagship crime bill, police in England and Wales are to be given powers to fine or move on rough sleepers deemed to be causing a “nuisance”.

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Labour’s priority must be to restore Sure Start and financial support to low-income families

There is a depressing reality related to the poverty figures that show that last year one in six British children lived in families suffering from food insecurity and one in 40 children lived in a family that accessed a food bank in the previous 30 days (“ Poverty data is a mark of shame for Tory rule ”). The punishing austerity package that George Osborne and David Cameron inflicted on those who are trapped in low-income families was the benchmark for the years of rising poverty levels that we see today.

You correctly highlight the need for Labour, if they win the next election, to prioritise lifting children and their families out of poverty. Alongside reversing tax cuts and borrowing to restore financial support to low-income families, they should also restore New Labour’s flagship Sure Start policy, invest in our crumbling schools infrastructure, incentivise teachers and ensure that NHS staff, rail workers and other people on low incomes are paid a decent wage in a secure job.
Stuart Finegan
Lewes, East Sussex

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Exclusive: Millions more GP appointments potentially created as a result of closures

Almost 1,000 pharmacies in England have closed since 2017, potentially leading to millions of extra GP appointments, the Guardian can exclusively reveal.

There are more than 11,000 pharmacies in England. Guardian analysis of the official register of these chemists has found that parts of the country have lost more than one in five pharmacies in the last six years, with poorer areas experiencing proportionally more closures.

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Rules that favour spending on physical infrastructure over the public sector workforce should be overhauled

The UK’s public services are in a state of near-collapse. Increased spending on health, care and social security is desperately needed, as the latest shocking poverty figures make painfully obvious. But while the NHS regularly tops voters’ lists of concerns , and a majority of the public favours higher spending , most people do not pay much attention to the technical details of government accounting. In the run-up to an election and spending review, this should change. Rules as well as figures require scrutiny. Rachel Reeves’s commitment to the principle that a Labour government should borrow to invest – but not otherwise – should concern everyone who wants to see the NHS, and the public realm more generally, restored.

So should the Treasury’s definition of investment. Traditionally, this refers to capital projects such as new transport links, hospital buildings or energy infrastructure. The point is that these are understood to provide long-term benefits that extend beyond service users to the wider economy. By contrast, and according to international accounting conventions, public money spent on salaries and other running costs comes under the heading of day-to-day (or current) expenditure. What this means, in practical terms, is that it is sometimes easier to get funding for a big scheme such as HS2 than for pay packets.

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Former PM says multibillion-pound fund would be ‘transitional arrangement’ to give struggling families breathing space

• Britain seems stuck in a doom loop of poverty. I have a plan to raise billions to address that

Gordon Brown has called for the creation of a multibillion-pound national poverty programme using interest levied on bank reserve funds as part of an emergency plan to halt Britain’s slide into a “hungry decade” of destitution and hardship.

The former UK prime minister said the programme would signify a break with 14 years of austerity and help provide short term “pain relief” to millions of people in desperate hardship, alongside an overhaul of Britain’s welfare safety net.

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