We know that making real-life decisions and the whole UCAS commotion is basically a year away, but before you know it these choices will be getting all up in your face and demanding attention. Then there's all the exams, revision, coursework, birthdays/bar mitzvahs/weddings and cat gifs... it's never too soon to get focused.

Besides, what's sixth form all about anyway? If you can work out where it's heading, it gives the next two years more purpose, more focus — perhaps even more fun and success.

What we're saying is that, however early it seems, now's a great time to be thinking about two of the big questions: what do you want to study and where do you want to study it

If you’re thinking of going to uni in September 2021 but you haven’t thought about which unis you're going to apply to yet: You’d better level up and get going.

You’ve got until mid-January to complete your application for most courses, but Oxbridge, medicine and veterinary courses have deadlines that are less than a month away (October 15th).

This year has drove us inside our homes more than ever. We’ve all taken up a number of things to try and fill our times the best we can. From all becoming master bakers, taking our chance at cutting hair or finally picking up and learning how to play the recorder.

One of the saving graces of the lockdown was how technology allowed us to stay connected to our friends and family, but our relationship with technology has to be kept under control otherwise it has the potential to spiral into something that can have detrimental effects on our mental health.

Is it time to start thinking about which university you might want to go to?

Well fear no more!

Over the past few months we’ve had a go at making a handy map for you that outlines as many universities in the UK that we could throw our hat at.

Click here to have a look at the list of universities on offer with links to their location, websites and a little of our honest Push info too.

If you’re part of a university or college that isn’t on the map and would like to be included. Please email at aron@push.co.uk and we can get it added to the map.

Work experience: cancelled. Taster days: cancelled. University open days, you guessed it... cancelled.

Sinking into the sofa, many have felt like the whole of higher education is getting cancelled. Six months into lockdown, however, you start to realise that the world is actually at the tip of your fingers. 

We are the generation of technology. The generation of endless screening.  Even though work experience for many is cancelled, when a global pandemic forces us indoors, we’ve never felt more at home.

When distance learning is necessary, many students and teachers consider it a challenge. In reality, it can be a very useful tool which can provide students from all over the world with the chance to learn. Whether they don’t have access to education otherwise or a worldwide pandemic has taken place, distance learning can become a great alternative for everyone.
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In order to make it effective, though, teachers are not the only ones that need to find ways to keep it interesting. Students should also find ways to make distance learning more interesting in order to get something from it. Here are some tips to help you achieve just that.

A group of leading educational access charities and not-for profit organisations is calling for the government to take action to ensure that young people from less advantaged backgrounds do not face additional barriers in accessing further study, training and employment opportunities, following the allocation of A-level grades this year. 

We recognise that the circumstances surrounding this year’s A-levels made any ideal outcome impossible, but it is clear that – in a significant number of cases – individual students have been left with their future plans in disarray. What’s more concerning is that many of these students are from the least advantaged backgrounds. These are the young people who already face the biggest barriers in accessing higher education; barriers that have been compounded during lockdown. Every hour, we are encountering more young people whose plans for university, apprenticeships or jobs have been seriously affected because they were statistical exceptions.

We note that Ofqual's Technical Report details that the A/A* attainment gap between FSM and non-FSM students increased from 6.1% in 2019 to 7.1% in 2020, reversing progress made the prior year. Furthermore, independent schools saw a 4.7 percentage point increase in A/A* grades compared to just 0.3pp at Sixth Form/FE/Tertiary colleges.

As coalitions, working collaboratively to tackle educational inequality, our priority is to focus on how we, and the government, can best support young people. We call upon the government to ensure that no student, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, has their opportunity of work, training or study compromised by being graded unfairly by an algorithm.

We urge the government to do this by:

• Replacing calculated grades with centre assessment grades (CAGs) for all students where it doesn't result in a decrease in grade awarded. This removes the bias that currently favours those in small subject cohorts, who already receive an unadjusted CAG. If calculated grades are not replaced with CAGs, we recommend publishing CAGs alongside the grades awarded. To allow universities and employers to better interpret the grades awarded, a flag should show if their awarded grade was based on a CAG (due to small cohort size) or calculated grade. 
• Waiving appeal fees and developing a fast-track appeals process, so that young people can get a quick and smooth resolution to their grade concerns. This includes making sure that appeals can be made easily by those who no longer have the support of an assessment centre.
• Providing young people who choose to take autumn examinations with access to the academic support needed to succeed. Protecting young people from financial challenges during this time, by ensuring that they can access full social security benefits, at least until the exam results are published. 
• Removing the university student number cap, which is a structural barrier to less-advantaged applicants, and has hindered the flexibility of higher education institutions in recent days. Government should support the use of contextualised admissions processes which have played a vital role in fair treatment of the most impacted students. 

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Signatories
Nathan Samson, CEO, The Access Project, nathan@theaccessproject.org.uk
Anne-Marie Canning MBE, CEO, The Brilliant Club, amc@thebrilliantclub.org
Laura Gray, CEO, Brightside, laura.gray@brightside.org.uk
Sam Holmes, CEO, Causeway Education, sam.holmes@causeway.education
Maria Neophytou, Interim CEO, Impetus-PEF, maria.neophytou@impetus.org.uk
Rachel Carr OBE, CEO, IntoUniversity, rachel@intouniversity.org
Johnny Rich, CEO, Push, johnny@push.co.uk
John Craven, CEO, upReach, john@upreach.org.uk
Rae Tooth, CEO, Villiers Park Education Trust, rae.tooth@villierspark.org.uk.
 
Sam Butters and Gina Cicerone, Co-CEOs, Fair Education Alliance, gcicerone@faireducation.org.uk.

On social media: #coalitionforfairness

Finally, it’s time to relax. Have a couple of weeks off from the hard work you’ve been doing this year in unexpected circumstances. You've all done brilliantly everything considered! 

But you don’t want to sit and let your summer pass you by without being productive.. 

So what can you really do now to maximise your summer? Be that if you're thinking about university, an apprenticeship or a job.

Due to the COVID - 19 pandemic the year 2020 has come to a sudden pause. Due to the lockdown, both normal lives and the world economy faced a massive blow. Unemployment has shot up due to the pandemic effect. Unfortunately, among them, some students also lost their part-time jobs. A recent NUS report also stated that 80% of UK students are still struggling with their finances due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

This summer we all have a little more time to fill.

Covid-19 has meant that a lot of the usual events we enjoy doing aren't able to go ahead. Mass gathering? Not happening I'm afraid. 

So you've got a whole lot of time that's opened up. So how are you going to fill it?

Covid-19 has caused a lot of heartache and head scratching for us all...particularly you year 11s, 12s and 13s out there.

Ironically, even though you haven't been able to sit your GCSEs and A Levels, you've been tested more than ever during these last few months: in your motivation, and your ability to work remotely under varying socio-economic conditions (and stressful or non-stressful household circumstances).

​Remember that just by you being willing to engage daily with your learning between now and September, and motivate yourself to attempt even the smallest of positive learning habits each day, you will be developing a game-changing attitude, and rock-solid resilience, compared to any other teenage generation since war time.

The deadlines have passed for your decisions on your university offers so I hope you managed to get your research sorted and were confident and comfortable in your final decision.
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Of course, this particular year, the decision was even bigger than usual. The pandemic has meant that we aren’t completely sure what form university will take in September and so it may feel like there’s a bigger risk of committing to an undergraduate degree.

Uni applications have now officially opened for 2021 entry. The virtual floodgates were raised on May 19th, but don’t worry, it always starts with a trickle.

​The deadline is still a while away and you can’t actually submit your application until the 8th September at the earliest. But the dogs are now off the leash, the horses are out of the gates and the, erm, hamsters are out of the hutch.

At Push we’re all about making the right choice about your future.

Don’t forget there’s so many different options for you right now, arguably more than any generation before you. It’s all about sitting down to think, how you learn best and what it is you want from life.

While some really specialised careers may have one particular pathway, such as obtaining a medical degree to become a doctor, it isn’t the case with a lot of careers now and some are opening their metaphorical doors to allow other routes into them that aren’t just university.

For example the College of Policing is now offering Police Constable degree apprenticeships. Meaning you can now get a degree in professional policing practice while getting paid and receiving the practical on-the-job training for the role eradicating the need to get involved with any of that pesky student finance stuff. Fantastic!

This summer is looking to be quite different to what we’re used to. Some lockdown restrictions are beginning to be lifted as we head back towards a bit of normality but things aren’t, and likely won’t be, the same as they were before.

Nonetheless there’s ways you can be using the summer to improve your skillset. ​

Right about now, you should be thinking about your student finance for next year. So if you haven’t completed your application, do it very soon. Although right now there is, of course, some changes to the process in light of the Covid-19 situation. ​

These are the most important changes to know if you're applying for Student Finance in the middle of a pandemic.

With schools and universities all currently closed, and a return date uncertain (at the time of writing), the question of how we are going to return is starting to come up. While we’re waiting for government advice on how this might come about, universities have started considering the possibility of starting next academic years' terms entirely online.

An issue however is that universities aren’t considering any sort of reduction in tuition fees because of this, as the BBC has discovered. Understandably students aren’t happy about this and there’s good reason not to be.

Being off campus doesn’t just mean you’re missing your lectures and seminars, it also means you’re not able to utilise all of the facilities that you’re paying for with your tuition fees.​

So what are you actually paying for with your fees?