As far as she is concerned, she and the assembly are simply giving Wales the education system that a largely rural country – where, for many parents, there is only one local secondary school – needs.Her reforms have progressed apace. A Welsh version of the White Paper announced that the country would have no truck either with privatisation or specialist schools. Communities in Wales were proud of their schools and wanted them to remain comprehensive, it declared.It was not an attempt to cock a snook at Whitehall. The day before an important English White Paper was published outlining government plans for a massive increase in the number of specialist schools and paving the way for private takeovers of state-financed schools, the Welsh struck out on their own.

According to both, the decision merely put an end to a week of “ritual humiliation” for the schools at the bottom of the league table which may have been battling against the odds and providing a decent education for their pupils.But the Welsh revolution did not end there. Results this summer show there has been no falling-off in performance. More than 80 per cent of pupils reached the required level in both key subjects – maths and English.As for the league tables, neither Ms Davidson not Mr Matthewson, the head of Whitchurch High school in Cardiff – a 2,500-pupil comprehensive reputed to be the largest in the country, shed a tear over their passing. Davidson explains why she decided to put an end to the testing regime. “If you put the test results alongside the teachers’ own assessments, there is no perceptible difference between them,” she says. Therefore there did not seem any point in continuing with the tests So last year they were abolished.

It was accompanied by the end of league tables for secondary schools. He had the answer to their problems because he came from Wales where – as Jane Davidson, the Welsh Education Secretary, explains – tests and the league tables that accompany them are old history now.Since the setting up of the Welsh Assembly in 1999, the principality has moved further and further down the road of establishing a completely different education system from the one that operates on the other side of the Severn Bridge in England.The first step was the abolition of tests for seven-year-olds. One head after another was complaining about the iniquity of the testing and league tables regime facing their schools.
The chairman of the proceedings, Gareth Matthewson, the president of the National Association of Head Teachers, could afford a wry smile. The debate among head teachers was at its most earnest. Signed Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh, Anne Robinson and Alan Hansen as new columnists.Lows* Circulation, excluding bulk sales, fell below the 1 million mark in September 2002 for the first time in nearly 50 years.* Censured by the Press Complaints Commission for publishing details of Euan Blair’s university application in January 2002.* Criticised for breaking the PCC code over payments to Jonathan Aitken’s daughter Victoria in July 1999..