There is one private and precarious enterprise offering a GCSE Latin course to maintained schools, which I organise, with the support of the university outreach department and a loyal band of teachers who still believe in the Classics.
Revealing that one in 100 A-level and GCSE grades were changed after challenges by schools and pupils this summer, Ofqual said it was particularly concerned with the upsurge in challenges and warned of "significant implications" for schools of changes to the systems of marking and re-marking for the exams.
With about 8m A-level and GCSE grades certified in 2014, that meant that nearly one in every 100 was changed as a result of challenges.
Ofsted's recent report on highly able learners lamented that a quarter of children who received a high grade at primary school don't go on to get expected high grades at GCSE.
Research such as that from the Centre for Analysis of Youth Transitions (Cayt) at York University, for the Department for Education, published alongside the Milburn report, also continues to indicate that early intervention to boost key stage 4 achievement (GCSE level) is crucial, and certainly before key stage 5, where much of the Offa-monitored expenditure has historically been targeted.
The sharp rise in grade changes was partly owing to increased numbers of successful challenges to GCSE results.
The dramatic improvement in GCSE results (<46% of candidates achieved five or more passes with grades A*-C) was obvious "evidence of the impact" of the new regime.
The impressive array of skills is just one element of the tough new GCSE in food preparation and nutrition, which also covers the relationship between diet, nutrition and health, and the impact of a poor diet.
Figures for last year's exams in England show that changes to exam rules and league-table make-up affected the overall success rate, with 53% of pupils achieving the government's measure of five GCSE grades of C or above including English and maths – a fall from 59% in 2013.
Which is perhaps just as well, as the independent thinktank, the Institute of Fiscal Studies, has been through all of them with a calculator and declared every party in need of remedial GCSE economics classes.
Time to make citizenship an obligatory GCSE: without an exam, it's ignored.
