A top local academic has welcomed the Education Secretary's announcement that universities will take control of A-level syllabuses.
In a letter to Ofqal, the qualifications watchdog, Michael Gove announced that ministers would relinquish control of the syllabuses and hand them over to exam boards and panels made up of senior dons from the Russell Group universities.
Among the senior academics set to sit on the panels is the Herodotus Chair of History at Hounslow University, Ken Lucid. Pof Lucid has been an outspoken critic of the existing A-level system and the calibre of undergraduate it produces.
"Well it's about bloody time," he said today. "I've been in Gove's ear about this for donkey's."
It is believed, in fact, that Prof Lucid met Gove last Friday and finally persuaded him to take this latest action during a long afternoon session in Chiswick's legendary watering hole, The Tabard Inn.
"When I get my way with history, I'm certainly going to make sure kids who come up know a bleeding sight more than just Hitler and bloody Stalin," Lucid continued.
Research has also suggested that too many universities were having to provide remedial English classes for undergraduates.
"Oh yes, and they'd better be able to string a sentence together, or they'll wish they'd never heard of Thomas Babington Macaulay," Prof Lucid added. "Mind you, it's a cinch they haven't, knowing the level of history in bloody schools these days."
