After more than 50 years of setting the gold standard for education worldwide, the A-level may finally be forced to retire.

While the Government is trying to breathe life back into the embattled exam with a series of measures to distinguish the brightest candidates, private schools are already hammering the nails into its coffin.

Claiming the qualification is now devalued with too many students getting top grades, they are looking elsewhere for a course that will challenge their sixth-formers.

They're eyeing the new Cambridge Pre-U diploma being developed only for independent schools.

But where does that leave our state schools? Excluded from this new qualification, state pupils won't be competing on the same level at school so they cannot hope to compete fairly for jobs and university places.

The threat of a mass walk-out by the private sector should act as a serious wake-up call for the Government. It needs to restore universal confidence in the national exam system or risk creating massive inequalities by furthering the divide between private and state schools.