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SCHOOLS ENSURE THAT STAFF AND PUPILS RESUME LESSONS IN SAFE ENVIRONMENT
A GROWING number of students across England are returning to schools after lockdown measures were eased following the outbreak of the pandemic in March.
Some year groups started returning to classrooms this month, a move welcomed by both students and parents.
At Bonneville Primary School, headteacher Andrea Parker worked hard to ensure that staff and pupils could resume lessons in a safe environment, where children were divided into “bubbles” with their own classrooms, and distance markers minimised the risk of infection.
Miriam Paridjanian’s 10-year-old daughter Rosa was among those who returned to school on June 3.
A qualified teacher herself, Paridjanian said, “We were apprehensive, obviously, but I was desperate for my daughter to go back to Bonneville because she was getting a bit down at home.”
Home-schooling was “very challenging,” she said, and welcomed the chance for Rosa to be able to work alongside her friends again.
“Rosa is normally very bright and bubbly, but she just wasn’t feeling happy,” Paridjanian said. “I had a really hard time motivating her, she was getting a bit despondent and unmotivated, and she didn’t want to do the work.
“The school seemed to have prepared for reopening very well. There had been lots of communication, and I knew if I had any queries they’d be answered; so when the offer came to send her back, I took it.
Rosa, too, was pleased to be back at Bonneville.
She said, “I was excited when mum told me I’d be going back to school, but nervous too, in case it didn’t work and we’d have to go back to being home schooled.”
According to Rosa, lessons are easier to do in school because “we have got help from our teachers”. She added, “I’ve made some new friends, because we all play together in our bubble in the playground now. I also like seeing my friends; everything’s more fun with friends.”
She does, however, miss some aspects of her previous routine in school. “We have to eat lunch in our classrooms then go out to play, whereas we’d usually just all eat together in the dinner hall, which is better,” Rosa said.
Parker has seen her efforts pay off after the school adopted the new safety guidelines.
“It’s all gone really well,” she said. “To see everyone sticking to the timetable, to see parents coming in and lining up on the two-metre lines as you planned them to do, bubbles of children moving at the right times, and everything running smoothly, makes me exceedingly proud.”
While 96 pupils returned to classes on June 3, within three weeks this number rose to 126 and 80 per cent of all children who were eligible to attend.
Parker said, “It’s been a community effort, and has taken a lot of hard work from education professionals who’ve spent hours perfecting what we need to do in order to get children back to school – we’ve been living and breathing it.
“The result was that there was no reluctance on the children’s part when they came back – they’re thrilled to see their friends and be able to play with each other. The parents have been very grateful too, and our teachers are really happy to be back.”
The school liaised with not only parents and students, but teachers, too. Parker said, “Any teachers who were anxious before coming back were reassured as soon as they saw how everything worked. We introduced the induction days to give teachers the opportunity to walk through and see the school in action for themselves before returning.”
Rosa’s mother Paridjanian summed it up, saying, “Psychologically, I think children need that routine of getting ready and leaving the house in the morning, and since we sent Rosa back after half term she’s perked up so much – she’s like a different child. It’s made a difference to the whole family.”
Around two thirds of secondary schools opened to more pupils last week, and thousands of Year 10 and 12 students are benefiting from invaluable contact time with their teachers.
TIPS FOR BACK AT SCHOOL
To reduce congestion at the school gates, only one parent
should attend pick-up and drop-off.
Walk or cycle to school to ease the strain on public transport.
Practise healthy habits at home to support good hygiene in
the classroom.
Above all continue to reassure your young ones.
Please closely refer to the protective measures in education and
Almost 2,000 GBS UK students have today graduated from a range of courses, all aimed at making them valuable assets for employers from across a range of sectors.
It comes a week after 1,500 GBS UK students from across Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, graduated at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.
Students have graduated from Business, Healthcare, Construction, and Digital Technologies, ranging from HNDs to Bachelor Degrees, to address the demand in the UK for a skilled workforce.
GBS UK CEO, James Kennedy, said GBS UK is having more of an impact on its communities with each year that passes.
“We work to widen participation, address skills shortages and ultimately enable social mobility – today, we see this first-hand,” said Mr Kennedy.
“These students we see here today will go on to have a significant impact on their local communities, which in the long-term will also have an impact at a national level.”
“Business, healthcare, construction and digital technologies are all crucial sectors for the UK economy, growing at a rapid rate and offering increasing employment opportunities.”
“We stand ready to address this demand, with mature-age graduates with unique lived experience, that makes them a well-rounded choice for employers.”
“It was wonderful to have James Murray MP here today, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, and a good friend of GBS UK, to address our students and inspire them in their next steps.”
The Office for Students (OfS) has also today released its NSS data for 2025, showing a considerable increase in satisfaction across almost all categories.
Most notably, 90% of students were satisfied in the ‘Teaching on my Course’ category. This is a very high level of satisfaction and 3% above the average for the Higher Education sector as a whole.
GBS also ranked significantly above the sector average across all categories in the survey with Organisation and Management 8% higher and Academic Support 5% higher than the average reported by the OfS.
The three keynote speakers at the event were Mr James Murray, MP, Minister and Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Alastair Nathan Cook CBE who is an English former cricketer and former captain of the England Test and ODI teams and Mr Virendra Sharma, Former Senior Labour MP.
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Programs and infrastructure supporting small businesses and the development of digital skills in European countries are highly effective.
According to Eurostat data, Germany is the leader in terms of small business development indicators such as the number of people employed in small and medium-sized businesses and the total turnover of SMEs.
At the same time, Italy ranks first in terms of the total number of companies, surpassing Germany by more than 1.5 times (3.7 million companies compared to 2.4 million in Germany).
France, which ranks third in Europe in terms of small business turnover and second after Italy in terms of the number of companies, shows a similar model of small business development to Italy. The UK, like Germany, is characterised by a smaller number of companies but high turnover.
The characteristics of the national economy play an important role. The European leaders in terms of small and medium-sized business turnover in mineral extraction are Italy (many small deposits, often depleted and unprofitable for large-scale industry) and Norway (oil, gas, polymetals).
The UK is the leader in terms of turnover of small and medium-sized businesses in the construction industry, as well as in high-tech industries: information and telecommunications services, research and development services.
Overall, the key industry in which small and medium-sized businesses have the greatest potential for development is trade. But it is also important to support such promising areas as manufacturing, construction, and, especially, science and engineering.
Micro-enterprises with up to 10 employees are the main employers in European small and medium-sized businesses. The number of people employed in these companies is close to the number of employees in large companies.
Economic efficiency is an important factor determining the significant share of micro-enterprises with up to 10 employees in the European economy. In terms of gross profitability before personnel costs (the ratio of value added at factor cost to turnover), micro-enterprises with up to 10 employees are in the lead.
Given that a significant proportion of these micro-enterprises are, in fact, the workplaces of their owners, the positive role of small and medium-sized businesses for the economies of European countries as a whole is obvious.
Which companies need business analytics and why? What problems does it solve? How does it differ from business analysis?
Business analytics is primarily about working with data and studying a company's performance indicators.
It is carried out by specially trained specialists called business analysts.
Using data analysis, they help managers identify business problems and find opportunities for sustainable development.
How business analytics differs from business analysis
Experts still argue about what business analytics is: whether it is identical to business analysis or represents a separate field of knowledge. To figure this out, let's look at the main goals of business analysis and business analytics.
Business analysis is studying a company's activities in a broad sense: analyzing its development strategy, business processes, organizational structure, and information systems, and designing and setting up how all of this interacts with the business environment and the outside world.
The main goal of business analysis is to think through and implement organizational changes that would allow the company to achieve its main goals in the best possible way.
The main goal of business analytics is to support management decisions and organizational changes with high-quality, relevant, and objective data.
Here are the three main tasks of business analytics:
obtain data on the company's performance in the form of figures;
process and structure this data — make it suitable for further analysis;
analyze the data — find patterns in the company's activities and model forecasts for its development under certain conditions.
Thus, business analytics is part of business analysis, which involves the collection, processing, and analysis of data. It is the first and necessary step in the effective management of organizational change.
Which companies need business analytics and why
Business analytics is necessary for all companies that want to make high-quality management decisions. Only decisions based on facts can be high-quality. Business analysts are responsible for collecting and processing these facts.
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It is important not only to collect data on the company's activities, but also to prepare it for managers:
structure it;
analyze it — identify trends and tendencies that influence factors;
present the results of the analysis in a clear form;
prepare recommendations on how to use this data to improve the company's activities.
The recommendations of business analysts provide company management with up-to-date and reliable information about what is happening within the company and beyond. This approach helps to make informed business decisions.
A simple example: a company sells seasonal goods — bicycles or skis. Business analysts will accurately determine the product demand curve, taking into account seasonal factors, present it to managers in an understandable way, and provide detailed recommendations on what needs to be done to maximize sales revenue.
Without business analytics, such decisions are made blindly, which leads to the company missing out on profits.
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