“It has attracted a lot of comment and has angered a lot of my colleagues. JOJO MOYES

The controversy over Tony Blair’s style of leadership took a new twist early this morning as the former Shadow Cabinet minister Bryan Gould denied he was the author of a highly critical article about the leadership.
Mr Gould, now vice-chancellor of Waikato University in New Zealand, said he was considering legal action over the feature in the London Evening Standard on Monday.”The article is a total fabrication, written by somebody else,” said Mr Gould. We are not, though, complacent about standards.”George Turnbull, of the Associated Examining Board, believes there has been a genuine rise in standards: “If you were to compare papers from 40 years ago with today’s, the conclusion would have to be that today’s are much more difficult.”But employers and university dons complain that the standard of their recruits has fallen and that 18-year-olds have poor literacy and numeracy skills.Analysis of results, page 3. Entries for maths and physics continued to decline.Lord Henley, the Education and Employment Minister, said: “The A-level system has stringent quality controls and the examining boards assure us that the results this year indicate standards are being maintained.This is good news. However, the proportion of candidates gaining A-C increased by 1.1 per cent, with one in seven getting a grade A.Overall, entries were down 1 per cent compared with a 4.2 per cent drop in the number of 18-year- olds. There are 396,000 applicants for 271,000 places.Universities have acted quickly because more students have made the grade.

For the eighth successive year both the pass rate (at grades A-E) and the proportion of candidates awarded top grades has risen. Around 300,000 students will learn this morning whether they have the grades they need for their chosen university or college.News of the record results comes as Gillian Shephard, the Secretary of State for Education, is considering proposals for an inquiry into complaints from traditionalists that A-level standards have fallen. The inquiry, proposed last April, has the backing of both Chris Woodhead, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, and Sir Ron Dearing, the Government’s chief adviser on exams.The provisional A-level figures show the improvement in grades is levelling off: the pass rate is up 0.9 per cent to 84 per cent compared with a rise of 1.8 per cent last year. JUDITH JUDD

Education Editor
Many more students than last year will be told immediately that they have a university place as A-level results published today set new record pass rates.By yesterday, universities had accepted 118,455 students compared with 84,723 at the same time last year. Croatia’s objective is to push Bosnian Serb artillery units out of range of Dubrovnik.The United States, which has emerged as Croatia’s main Western ally, says that the Croatian military successes offer an opportunity to forge a general peace settlement in Bosnia and Croatia.But the Croatian army’s advance through western Bosnia seems to be so unstoppable that the Croatian president, Franjo Tudjman, and his advisers in Zagreb may see little reason to halt the offensive and start negotiations while their enemies are retreating.President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Anthony Lake, and the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Richard Holbrooke, have been touring European capitals to brief governments on a new American peace proposal.The initiative would allow the Bosnian Serbs to keep the recently fallen Muslim enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa and let them form confederal links with Serbia.But the Americans have begun to play down another idea included in the plan, which was to offer the Muslim enclave of Gorazde to the Bosnian Serbs, after the notion was denounced by President Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia.Instead, officials maintain that if the Bosnian Serbs rejected the new plan, they would be liable to Nato air strikes and the Clinton administration would no longer resist efforts in Congress to lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian government.Refugees’ tale, page 13.

Such an outcome is no longer inconceivable as a result of the Croatian victories in Krajina and western Bosnia.Croatian troops also massed yesterday around the southern Adriatic port of Dubrovnik in apparent preparation for an assault on the Bosnian Serb positions near the town of Trebinje. The Croats and Muslims have already joined forces in Croatia and broken the Serb siege of Bihac that lasted 1,200 days.To reach Banja Luka, the Croats and Muslims would first have to capture towns such as Prijedor and Sanski Most, where some of the most vicious Serb “ethnic cleansing” of Muslims took place in 1992. Internationally isolated, denied large-scale support from Serbia and named as war crimes suspects by a United Nations tribunal, they now see a resurgent Croatian army rolling back their war gains and even preparing to enter the Bosnian Serb heartland around Banja Luka.The fall of Drvar would leave the Bosnian Serbs in control of only one major town in western Bosnia, Bosanski Petrovac.If that fell to the Croats, they would be able to link up on Bosnian territory with the Muslim-led government army that operates out of Bihac. Other forces crossed the border further south and linked up with Bosnian Croat units that were pressing north from Bosansko Grahovo, a town the Serbs lost last month.For the Bosnian Serb leaders, Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, it is the most serious crisis of the three-and-a-half year war. Military analysts in Belgrade said the Serb defenders of the town had been demoralised by the fall of Krajina, the flight of tens of thousands of Krajina Serb refugees, and power struggles in public between the military and civilian wings of the Bosnian Serb leadership.Croatia gave notice of its intention to sweep through western Bosnia on Tuesday, when two infantry battalions – supported by tanks and artillery – rolled into Bosnia at Dugo Polje, 20 miles from Drvar.

TONY BARBER

Europe Editor
Croatia’s armed forces, rampant after conquering the rebel Serb region of Krajina, were on the brink of a victory in western Bosnia last night that could tilt the balance of the war against the Bosnian Serbs.The Croats were poised to capture the town of Drvar, a success that would virtually eliminate the Bosnian Serb presence in the west and could encourage Croats and Muslims to punch their way through to Banja Luka, the largest city in Bosnian Serb hands.Sources quoted by the independent Belgrade-based news agency Beta said Serb resistance in Drvar had collapsed in the face of Croatian attacks from the west and south. Take-up was still a long way off that achieved in the US.But with outsourcing continuing to be a popular management technique, he encouraged companies to see factoring as “one way of outsourcing credit control and sales ledger management”.. The same figures show that in the first half of this year, members of the ABFD discounted invoices worth pounds 14.3bn – 28.1 per cent more than last year.Murray Chisholm, marketing director at TSB Commercial Finance, said there was still huge potential. A cutback in high- street capital spending knocked turnover down by pounds 3m in 18 months, and although the company sought to control costs, the bank stepped in to appoint a receiver.A tense week of negotiations concluded with the directors buying the business from the receiver and setting out to rebuild it. TSB stepped in when a working capital shortage prevented expansion.The banks, which had also suffered during the recession, were reluctant to provide cash against future orders, so Mr Lewis thought US-style invoice discounting, which he had come across when working in California, might provide a solution.Figures from the Association of British Factors and Discounters published last week show that small and medium-sized firms using factors and discounters have grown by an average of 8.3 per cent over the past year. The company formed in 1978 to provide interiors for the first McDonalds sites in the UK, and by 1991, had grown to employ 105 staff and achieve a turnover of pounds 6.2m. It provides cash linked directly to sales, and it doesn’t require a personal guarantee from the directors.”This was particularly important for CS Furniture since the directors were seeking to rebuild the business following a rapid fall in sales on the back of the high street recession.