Success for a home boy:

Arran Fernandez surprised educationalists two years ago by passing a GCSE aged five. Yesterday, he was celebrating again after becoming the youngest person to get an A* grade in the exam.

The Surrey schoolboy was seven when he took the higher-tier GCSE maths paper and topped this GCSE roll-call of young achievers after scoring the highest possible grade.

Like 12-year-old Jonathan Prior, who last week became the youngest person to pass an A-level this year, Arran, now eight, does not attend school but is taught at home by his father, Neil Fernandez.

Arran said: "I'm very proud of myself and so are my family and friends."

But he added that he planned to take a break from exams and would not move straight on to A-levels in 2004. "I study English and French and also I'm studying geography and astronomy," he said. "Daddy doesn't think I should go to school. We've done topics that aren't in the syllabus, such as complex numbers and groups."

Sounds like Daddy, who sounds like an interesting guy, has a point. And note the telling little detail "and friends". Home schooled children are often accused of not being able to make those.

Incidentally, school is not the only arena to display ranking slippage. Do you think that, like US generals, A grades at GCSE will eventually come in five different versions above the basic A, in the form of one to five star A grades?

David Carr of Samizdata also comments on this story, but he apparently got in a muddle about the difference between A (which anyone with two brain cells to rub together can get in their sleep) and A* (which requires over a dozen brain cells and full wakefulness). But, as is usual at Samizdata, there are some interesting comments.