However Capital’s flagship 95

However, Capital’s flagship 95.8 FM London station has recently lost substantial numbers of listeners, dropping below 10 per cent of the London market, and many believe the company is in structural decline.Richard Menzies-Gow, analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, said: “Capital would instantly give them [GMG] a big infrastructure and a big position with advertisers but they would also get all Capital’s problems.”. Wales is to review national curriculum tests in schools for 11 and 14-year-olds in a move that will increase pressure on ministers in England to scrap them. The review could lead to the tests being abandoned altogether in favour of internal assessment by teachers – as demanded by Britain’s biggest teachers’ union, the National Union of Teachers (NUT). Wales’s decision to abandon tests for seven-year-olds this year was seized upon by teachers’ leaders in England, who called to have them scrapped over the border.Last week Charles Clarke, the Secretary of State for Education, announced a softening of the Government’s line on the tests for seven-year-olds, saying that more weight would be given to teachers’ assessments. But he was adamant that the tests for pupils at seven, 11 and 14 were “here to stay”.Ms Davidson said she feared that too many schools in Wales were “teaching to the test”, so that pupils were failing to get a broad and balanced curriculum – a view shared by Welsh school inspectors.She said she was anxious about a dip in academic performance by the time youngsters reached the age of 14. “What we want to do is find the best method of assessing young people so we can ensure that we build on their ability to achieve between the ages of 11 and 14,” she said.The move was welcomed by the NUT, which decided at its annual conference last month to ballot on a boycott of tests for seven-year-olds in England and those for 11 and 14-year-olds in England and Wales.

John Bangs, the NUT’s head of education, said: “There are many reasons why the Government in England should learn from what is happening in Wales.”The broad-minded approach towards testing and concern over its impact on teaching should be the cornerstone of how the Government tackles testing – instead of the closed mind it has adopted.”. Teenagers will learn about cloning and genetically modified food under plans to make school science more popular and relevant to everyday life. The new curriculum should be taught in schools from 2005.The changes mark an attempt to reverse the perceived decline in the popularity of science and address complaints that today’s students find the subject boring and irrelevant. The new curriculum has received support from across the education and scientific worlds, but traditionalists fear that the shift towards topical debates could mean the “dumbing down” of science teaching in schools.Under the proposals, the current science curriculum would be replaced with a tiny core of compulsory material suitable for all students.

A new qualification would be developed, to teach pupils the science needed by a “consumer or citizen” and preparing them for roles such as “householder, parent or juror”.The new curriculum will be aimed at those who have no particular enthusiasm for science and do not intend to continue with it beyond the age of 16. It will attempt to engage young people using topical issues in the hope that they will retain important scientific principles for life.The plans were approved by David Miliband, School Standards minister, this month and will go out to schools for consultation until 18 July. The minister has stressed the importance of developing the new course as quickly as possible.”Without it I do not think the new programme suitable for all learners can be seen as a serious commitment to science learning,” Mr Miliband wrote in a letter launching the consultation to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which advises ministers on the curriculum. He stressed that the new core curriculum would represent the bare minimum pupils were expected to study. The expectation was that most young people would continue to study “a substantial programme” of science.The new exam will build on a pilot called Science in the 21st Century, which begins in September in 82 schools.John Holman, professor of chemical education at York University, who developed the pilot scheme, welcomed the Government’s decision.