So the Academic Quality Axe has fallen. This is from today's Times:

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) examination board, which has decided to withdraw Greek and Latin from 2006, has rejected a last-minute appeal from Stephen Twigg, the Schools Minister. Courses which begin next month will be the last to be examined by the board.

Mr Twigg said that state schools pupils would be disadvantaged by the decision and accused the board of failing to consult teachers adequately.

"No case for reconsidering," intoned Mike Cresswell."Very low demand ... no longer sustain the losses." But he Insisted that the Always Quick to Alienate was still an educational charity “whose only purpose is to contribute to education” Interesting way it has of showing it. By the way, it's dropping GCSE archaeology and Russian too.

So, AQA RIP.

What is to happen to the successors of the more than 5,000 students who took Latin and Greek with the Academically Quite Appalling board last year? That's about 500 GCSE Greek candidates and about 3.000 who sat Latin, along with the A level candidates.

Can the OCR board adjust its syllabuses to allow for candidates from state schools to have a fair bite of the cherry? The big exam reorganisation, I seem to recall, banned any board from offering more than one syllabus in any one subject; now that ACR has a monopoly thrust upon it, can this ban not be eased? It was not, surely, designed for cases like this. If OCR would find such an exercise too expensive, is there any way that classical bodies could, legally and practically, sponsor an alternative syllabus? If a second syllabus is impossible, can the existing OCR syllabus be modified in any way to allow for two distinct types of entry? There will still be two Classical Civilisation exams offered. Could OCR change its Classical Civilisation syllabus to include a Latin or alternative Greek section?

The Classics world in the UK needs to gather a working party at once to meet this new attack from the barbarians. I am sure that the Classical Association, the Joint Association of Classics Teachers, the Association for Latin Teaching, the Hellenic Society and the Roman Society would be only too ready to join in an urgent consultation. May I suggest that the Classics Coordinating Committee in the person of Dr Peter Jones would be a most acceptable rallying-point?