Moments later he said, “I hear him! I hear him! I’m OK now.”Martin Anderson. John Cordle was not unfairly characterised recently by Reginald Maudling’s biographer Lewis Baston as “a blustering moraliser with an intriguing private life and business links that stretched from West Africa to the Church of England newspaper”. John Howard Cordle, politician: born London 11 October 1912; managing director, E.W. It may be that Academies will, in future, be shown to be good at improving inner-city education.

But at the moment, there is no reason to penalise an l.e.a which does not want to go down the untested Academy route.It should also be remembered that it won’t only be the authority that is penalised if it loses its school building programme. Thousands of children will be sentenced to remain taught in decrepit buildings. That should shame a Government that is committed to improving standards of education.The Department for Education and Skills argues that the Government will not allow local authorities to sustain failure by refusing to engage with Academies. The Department might have a point if it could be proved that standards would suffer as a result of the lack of an Academy in a given area. Evidence shows, however, that many schools have been successful in improving themselves without resorting to Academy status.We are not against academies, but they should not be the only show in town. Ministers should think again before continuing their assault on the freedom of LEAs to shape their education systems themselves..

A celebrity campaign to save one of the country’s leading architecture departments scented victory yesterday after Cambridge University leaders hinted that the prestigious faculty could be saved. But after a rescue package, submitted by Cambridge’s School of Arts and Humanities, was presented to the university’s board at a three-hour meeting yesterday, Alison Richard, the university’s vice-chancellor gave the first suggestion that the department might be reprieved.In a statement last night, Professor Richard said a decision would be delayed until January to give the board more time to consider its options. “There is much to welcome in the school’s report, which addresses the board’s concerns about achieving excellence in both research and teaching, hallmarks of all academic activities at Cambridge,” she said. “The board wish to explore some aspects of these proposals with the department and the school and expect to take forward an agreed plan at the next meeting in January, 2005.”Celebrities, leading artists and architects and students have waged an energetic campaign to save the department.