The government is revealing its response to Tomlinson's proposed shake-up of the British exam system tomorrow.

According to the Times, "Sir Mike Tomlinson said he feared that Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, would miss an opportunity to end the divide between academic and vocational study when she publishes the Government’s reponse on Wednesday to his plans for a diploma for students aged 14 to 19."

Apparently the Prime Minister wants to keep the present exams, and Ruth Kelly has said “You don’t improve a system by getting rid of what’s good.”

Tomlinson says: “The worry for me is that there may be a sort of sacrificing of the needs of perhaps the majority in favour of what are the perceived strengths of the present system for a relative minority, who do pretty well already and don’t have too many difficulties in seeing their way through into higher education.”

Well, perhaps the academically abler half can get to higher education of some kind, but it's pretty hard even now to find a Classical education. If academic and vocational qualifications are merged in one great pudding, are the exam boards, faced with an even greater range of subjects to examine, not going to jetison minority subjects like Latin at once?