If your plan for next year is university then you’re already submitted your application, right? If not, then get a move on. The UCAS deadline (January 15th) may be the official cut-off, but a lot of places will have been filled already. We know how fab you are, but that doesn’t mean the unis are holding a space specially for you. Get your application in before the end of this month.

The pandemic might have changed your plans about going to university. Perhaps you’ve already deferred for a year or because of everything going on you may have already decided that uni isn’t the right path for you in 2021, but you’ll give it a go in 2022. 

If that’s the case, don’t let your gap year go by, in the blink of an eye, leaving you feeling unfulfilled and still not ready for uni. In days pre-covid (remember those?) a gap year often meant jetting off in a plane with a backpack and spending a couple of months in a new country. However we don’t know when that’s going to be a realistic option. So maybe it's time to think a little closer to home during your gap year.  Here are a few ideas to get started:

Covid casts a long shadow over lives. As we are discovering, the condition can persist for months or, as we may yet discover, possibly years. It also casts a shadow of grief over those who have lost – or will lose – those they love. But even those who, thankfully, have never been infected may yet find their lives have been blighted for years or even decades by this pandemic’s other long-term wasting effects.
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The labour market has rarely looked worse for young people and emerging from education into a recession can handicap a whole career. At first there are no jobs and, by the time there are, there’s another generation coming into bloom, fresh out of school or university, unwilted by months or years of unemployment.

We all knew that going into school after a six month break would not look normal. Schools and teachers are all doing their best to make things run smoothly, even when there’s an imminent risk of a class being randomly eliminated. It’s like coronavirus is playing a pac-man video game to destroy the education system completely. With weapons of hand sanitisers and one way systems, it looks like schools are putting up a good fight.

Although you may not have had to self- isolate at home, the thought doesn’t seem as scary as before. Hopefully, by now, you have seen many procedures to make a potential quarantine at home easier. Luckily technology has rapidly advanced from the last time schools have had to close a century ago. It’s promising to see an abundance of lesson resources to help students who are self-isolating readily available online if needs be. This can be beneficial even if you are not working from home, for example, lesson powerpoint  being uploaded onto your online portal for use in your revision.

A recent BBC study found that the least likely group to go to university is currently white males from low-income families. Only 26% of students from low-income backgrounds have gone on to higher education this year, only half of them were white British males.

October 15th is the deadline for applications to Oxford, Cambridge, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science courses. This is not a seriously-ill-line or near-death-line, it is a deadline. 

If you miss it, you'll have to wait a year to apply again. If you’re thinking about applying to these courses I’m sure you’re already done most of the legwork for your application. If you're not ready yet, then switch off your phone, dust off your laptop and let your mum know she’s on coffee duty for the next 24 hours solid

You'd be forgiven for thinking that with around a year to go until your first application deadline looms, you've got time to perfect your Beyonce dance routine. While this is a perfectly legitimate leisure activity and will look fierce when you whip it out at parties, choosing a uni is much easier if you take the time to do it right

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.