The new NHS Covid-19 app for England is unable to process results from tests carried out at NHS hospitals or Public Health England (PHE) labs.
Tens of thousands of test results from NHS hospitals and PHE labs have been confirmed every day for months, but the new NHS app does not allow users to input results from these sources.
While tests carried out at centralised coronavirus labs can still be added, the exclusion of others has prompted concerns at the effectiveness of the software.
– Lockdown caused ‘gulf’ in learning gap for disadvantaged pupils
The learning gap between disadvantaged schoolchildren and their better-off peers “has become a gulf” in the wake of lockdown, a leading educator has warned.
Steve Chalke, founder of Oasis Community Learning, which is responsible for 31,500 children at 52 academies across England, said recent research suggests disadvantaged pupils fell further behind in their education during the lockdown period.
Mr Chalke called on the government to treble the funding aimed at boosting the education of the UK’s most disadvantaged pupils.
He told the BBC: “Government should respond to the need before it causes irrevocable damage by trebling this funding, at least over the next three years, and focusing it on children living in persistent poverty and facing long-term disadvantage.
“It is vital that government makes this move now, to ensure that a generation of children, already disadvantaged before the Covid-19 lockdown but whose situations have deteriorated even further, are not completely abandoned, doomed to spend their lives struggling for opportunities their peers will have ready access to, rather than flourishing.”
