Facebook Rolls out new Shopping Functions
- Facebook has announced that it will now roll out “Facebook Shop, a new place to discover businesses and shop for products in the Facebook app”
- Facebook shop will be different from the current ‘Facebook Marketplace’ which is for peer-to-peer sales
- ‘Shops’ was announced in May and the rollout will now allow users to view products from brands, creators and businesses they follow
- The rollout will be tested in the US before further implementation
Charity to launch Further Legal Challenge to support Children in care
- A legal bid to challenge the changes to statutory duties for children in care, during the pandemic will be heard next week
- A previous case brought by Article 39 (a children’s rights charity) was lost against the Department for Education (DfE)
- The expedited case will now be heard in the Court of Appeal on the grounds that the DfE failed to consult with children, children’s rights organisations and the Children’s Commissioner
- The changes, due to expire next month meant that 65 duties related to children in care, across several pieces of legislation were weakened
- Duties include making adoption panels discretionary rather than mandatory, reducing timeframes for reviews, and allowing children to be placed with unapproved foster carers
Autistic Society says Children Need Time to Adjust to Face Coverings
- The National Autistic Society has said that autistic children need time to adjust to face coverings in schools, stating that it would be another ‘unexpected change’ for autistic children
- Tim Nicholls from the National Autistic Society said: “Autistic children can often already find school an incredibly difficult and overwhelming place. It wouldn’t be right to put another barrier in for them”
- He also stressed that policy changes to face coverings need to be introduced “…sympathetically, with compassion and with understanding about autism and the needs of autistic children.”
Learning Gap Between Rich and Poor Children Widens
- The learning gap between rich and poor primary age children in England has widened
- The Education Policy Institute (EPI) said the shift began before the pandemic and identified persistent poverty as the key cause of the weaker educational performance
- The EPI expects that school closures will widen the gap even further and reports that secondary pupils are more than 18 months behind better-off classmates
- Primary pupils were reported to be more than 9 months behind better-off classmates
- It is expected that it would take more than 500 years to close the gap, but now looks like it will be longer as the gap continues to widen
