A local authority spokesman said Dartmoor displayed notices warning people not to touch objects
A local authority spokesman said Dartmoor displayed notices warning people not to touch objects.. Scuffles broke out yesterday in Belfast after police blocked an Orange parade marching through a Catholic area. It was the third time in three months that Orange parades had been banned from the lower Ormeau Road, where five Catholics were shot dead by loyalist gunmen who opened fire on customers inside a bookmaker’s shop in February 1992. An Orange parade is due to march on the Ormeau Road on 12 July, the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne..
FRAN ABRAMS
Education Correspondent
Widespread appeals have been lodged over the national test results for 14-year-olds which appear to show that pupils were being marked far lower in English than in other subjects.Exams advisers are now facing criticism over their marks, awarded when the papers were sent to external markers for the first time. Some schools say the scores seem to suggest that pupils are two years behind where they should be.Last night, it was feared that all the 625,000 pupils who took the tests this year could have been marked too low. It is not clear whether wholesale adjustments could be made before parents are told the marks at the end of the summer term.Exam boards are likely to raise the issue today at a meeting with government advisers. They say they marked the tests as instructed and that if there is a problem it must be solved by the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA), which oversees the tests.Professional examiners were brought in to mark the national curriculum test papers after teachers’ complaints about the extra work that they involved led to a two-year boycott in 1993 and 1994. Those schools which did the tests in the first two years after their introduction marked the papers themselves but had the results externally validated.The National Association for the Teaching of English, which represents English teachers, had dozens of calls from distraught heads of department on Thursday and Friday after some of the marked papers were sent back to schools for checking.
It expected more complaints early this week: all papers are due to be sent back by tomorrow.Anne Barnes, general secretary of the association, said SCAA should take immediate action to calm schools’ fears. At the very least it should waive the pounds 5 per pupil fee for appeals. The SCAA said it had only received about 20 calls from schools.Its chief executive, Nick Tate, said: “The mark schemes have been extensively trialled. Markers have been trained to ensure that they apply the mark scheme fairly and consistently. Where schools are unhappy there are clear procedures for appeal.”The following are some sample questions from test papers.1.
Write about an incident in which you had to leave a place you knew well.2. Read Brutus’ and Antony’s addresses to the crowd from Julius Caesar and say what you learn about the differences between them. Do you think Brutus and Antony seem to be people whom the Romans can trust?3. Read a letter from the Red Cross appealing for money for war victims in Eastern Europe. Say in what ways it tries to persuade people to send money, commenting on the language, the layout and the impressions you are given of the Red Cross.. BY JOHN RENTOUL AND PATRICIA WYNN DAVIES
The Conservative leadership crisis intensified yesterday, as right and left in the party moved against what they see as an increasingly likely takeover by Michael Heseltine, President of the Board of Trade.
Mr Heseltine’s main rival, Michael Portillo, Secretary of State for Employment, admitted that a “pretty fevered” Tory party would not win the next election unless it “pulls its socks up”, while the centre-left Gillian Shephard, Secretary of State for Education, repeated through “friends” her intention to contest the leadership, should John Major be forced out of Downing Street.Tonight’s Panorama profile of Mr Portillo will further stoke the flames of speculation.
In it, Kenneth Baker, former Tory chairman, denies that he would split the party as leader:”One of the things about the Tory party is their capacity to unite behind a leader and I am quite sure the Conservative party would support Michael Portillo.”Lord Parkinson, another former Tory chairman, reports what Baroness Thatcher is said to have told Mr Portillo’s recent birthday party: “We brought you up, we were responsible for your upbringing We expect great things of you. You will not disappoint us.”As William Hill, the bookmakers, reduced the odds on Mr Heseltine becoming the next Tory leader, replacing Mr Portillo as favourite, Mrs Shephard’s re-entry in the undeclared Tory leadership race, made through “a ministerial colleague” in the Mail on Sunday, helped keep the pressure on the Prime Minister. Mrs Shephard could not be contacted yesterday.Further evidence of the momentum building behind Mr Heseltine’s undeclared candidacy is the emergence of a new “Stop Heseltine” campaign on the right.It includes Sir Nicholas Bonsor, who publicly warned last week against creating an opening for Mr Heseltine, James Cran, the MP for Beverley, and former ministers Sir Archie Hamilton and Michael Spicer. Mr Cran and Mr Spicer were the unofficial whip and spokesman for the Euro-sceptics through the months of rebellion on the Maastricht Bill.One of the group complained privately: “Nobody is talking for the Prime Minister – who is the bulwark against Heseltine.”I don’t like some of the Prime Minister’s policies, but I fear greatly what will happen if Heseltine takes over We will be hung out, dried and kippered. He will wield such power that there will be absolutely nobody to challenge him.