Review of the Papers, Thursday 19 July

Government

• The new Children, Schools and Families Secretary set himself on a collision course with the teaching establishment yesterday by pledging that national testing and school league tables were here to stay. Despite growing pressure from the Government's own examinations regulator and the majority of the teaching profession about overtesting in schools, Ed Balls said that "testing and the publication of results" were the only way to ensure accountability. "It enables us to be able to see as policymakers what is working, who is not performing well and, in the extremes, being able to tackle poor performance," he told The Times. It was necessary also, he said, to help parents to judge the performance of their child's school. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life-and-style/education/article2100198.ece
• Leading universities are taking fewer students from poorer areas despite the Government's efforts to persuade them to redress their middle class bias. Teenagers from higher income families and private schools have increased their hold on places at half of the 20 most sought-after universities, according to figures published today. The proportion of new undergraduates from the three lower social classes fell last year at Oxford and Cambridge and declined steeply at Birmingham and Imperial College, London. In figures sure to disappoint the Government, half of the 20 leading universities recorded a drop in the proportion of state-educated pupils gaining places. The drop also helps to explain the plan by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) to give tutors more information from next year about the social background of applicants. Universities are given extra money to reach out to pupils in poor areas. Most top universities in England failed to reach targets for increasing the proportion of poorer students but in Northern Ireland, which still has a grammar school system, Queen's, St Mary's and Ulster far exceeded the targets. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/19/nuni119.xml

• New drivers should be forced to take a year to learn and face a zero alcohol limit to cut the number of deaths caused by novice motorists, MPs urge today. Young male drivers are now the biggest killer of young women in the UK, according to the report from the transport select committee. They are also a danger to themselves: more than three times as many are killed as young female drivers, although they are more likely to pass the driving test. The proposals would raise the minimum driving age to 18 - in line with most of Europe - because people could only apply for a provisional licence at 17. The MPs say better training and tougher restrictions in the first year of a full licence - including a total ban on drinking before driving and on ferrying friends around at night - would help cut casualty rates. http://www.guardian.co.uk/transport/Story/0,,2129739,00.html

• The BBC was plunged into its biggest crisis since the Hutton inquiry yesterday after uncovering a "hornet's nest of deception" involving some of its biggest programmes, including the Comic Relief and Children in Need appeals. After discovering at least six more incidents of viewers being seriously misled, the BBC immediately suspended all its competitions across its television, radio and web operations. Some "editorial leaders" at the heart of the problems have been suspended. On what was dubbed a "black Wednesday" for public service broadcasting in the UK, Ofcom also unveiled a damning report into premium phone lines that uncovered a "systemic failure" in their operation. In an effort to head off a new wave of criticism, the director general, Mark Thompson, launched a mandatory training programme, Safeguarding Trust, for its 16,500 staff. http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,2129708,00.html

• Transport for London stepped in with a £750m pledge to prevent meltdown in the public-private partnership for the underground yesterday, as the capital's mayor warned of a "difficult period" for commuters after the tube's biggest maintenance firm entered administration. Ken Livingstone's TfL organisation yesterday provided emergency funding from the taxpayer for the shell of Metronet, the firm behind a £17bn tube maintenance programme, while it called in an administrator. Alan Bloom, an insolvency expert from Ernst & Young who guided Railtrack through its financial collapse, assured Londoners that he had an "overriding obligation" to ensure that the tube network did not grind to a halt. http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2129592,00.html

Conservatives

• The Conservative Party found itself at the centre of a police investigation last night after allegations a "Tory source" had leaked results of a postal ballot of today's Ealing Southall by-election. Scotland Yard confirmed it was looking into the case and a police spokesman, when asked about the claims, said: "We've received allegations of possible electoral offences in relation to the Ealing Southall by-election. We take it very seriously and appropriate action will be taken." The spokesman declined to be drawn on who had made the allegations or how the Conservatives had reacted. The Daily Telegraph diarist Jonathan Isaby, known for his connections with the Conservative party, posted details of the postal ballot on his blog last night. He wrote: "[A] source inside the Tory campaign [in Ealing] reports that it was looking incredibly close, with them calculating the main parties' tallies as follows: ..." The blog then listed the early results. Soon afterwards, the posting was removed from the website. http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article2782509.ece