Another one for the "What the hell is she thinking?" scrapbook. Everyone's favourite tennis star Caitriona Ruane has finally put forward her proposals for ending academic selection... by not quite ending it? Well not quite, not yet. Maybe.

It seems as if she's done exactly what Basil McCrea predicted she would, i.e. "cobble together a last-minute proposal", when she realised she wasn't going to get her way by shouting louder than her opponents, stamping her feet and quickly burying her head in the sand.

A new type of transfer test will be put together to run over three years from 2008-2001. The test will cover a broader range of topics than the current one and grammar schools may only be allowed to select between 20% and 50% of their pupils.

Nothing has changed. She still hasn't got the power to ban academic selection, and there is no way in hell this half-assed, mish-mash "policy" (using the term in the loosest possible sense) will prevent those grammar schools committed to maintaining their high standards from implementing their own test, rendering the whole exercise a pointless and expensive waste. But who cares about the cost of egalitarian dogma when it's not your cash?