A vast US war fleet deployed in the south Caribbean — ostensibly to fight drug-trafficking but widely seen as a push for violent regime change — has sparked international condemnation and bipartisan resistance in the US itself. FRANCISCO DOMINGUEZ reports
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The ‘Pre-U’ scandal
BERNIE EVANS reveals the scam of top-flight private schools running their own exclusive exam system instead of A-Levels
ANSELM ELDERGILL recalls the misjudgments, mishaps and moments of farce that shaped his years in legal practice
MAT COWARD tells how 18th-century scholar and revolutionary democrat Joseph Ritson turned a medieval outlaw into England’s people’s hero — soon to be gracing panto halls around the nation
The Communist Party of Britain’s Congress last month debated a resolution on ending opposition to all nuclear power in light of technological advances and the climate crisis. RICHARD HEBBERT explains why
Amid the festive lights, Scotland faces a stark holiday truth: only real investment in public services and the workers who sustain them can lift communities out of poverty, argues LILIAN MACER
Behind the cute names of Scotland’s road gritters lies a workforce underpaid and overlooked – a fitting reflection of a Budget that protected profits, bungled its rollout and offered hardly a glimmer of hope, writes MATT KERR
WITH the abolition of private schools now gaining increased support, there is yet another aspect of their provision which needs closer examination.
Some of the press have taken notice of the fact that most schools in the independent sector have chosen to ignore the newly reformed GCSE examinations, preferring, for obvious reasons, IGCSE examinations, for their already highly privileged pupils. What is being ignored, however, is that A-Level examinations, the accepted route into higher education for nearly all state school students, are also being avoided.
Three Freedom of Information (FoI) requests have revealed that, whilst there is much less regulation involved, pupils entering the examinations preferred by private schools have almost three times as much chance of getting A*/A grades than from A-Level entry.
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