Uni fines warning
UNIVERSITIES who give out an “unjustifiable” number of top-class degrees could be fined under new rules.
Figures suggest students are getting higher grades for the same level of work as those in previous years.
The surge in the number of first-class and 2:1 honours leads to so-called “grade inflation”.
New regulations due to be brought in this year means universities could face fines of up to £500,000.
More than a quarter of students now graduate with a first-class degree.
Education secretary Damian Hinds said: “It cannot be right that students in one year are awarded higher grades for the same level of achievement than those in previous years.
“We owe it to the hardworking students who have earned those top grades to stamp out this practice.”
A MUM is living in fear as her young son’s murderer is set to leave jail.
Liz Neailey’s life was torn apart when 11-year-old Wesley was strangled close to his home 20 years ago.
Evil Dominic McKilligan, then 18, throttled the boy and dumped his body in woodland.
Despite being handed a life sentence, the killer has now served his minimum prison term and made a bid for parole – meaning he could be freed any day.
Liz, 54, of Newcastle, is convinced McKilligan would strike again and put another family through hell.
In an emotional interview, she said: “If they let him out of prison, who’s gonna put their hands up to say, ‘We’ve got it wrong again?’.
“He’s dangerous, a very dangerous person.
“I don’t want this man out… not to do it again. Not to put a family through what we went through.”
Liz said her family has lived a nightmare since Wesley’s murder in June 1998.
The lad would now be in his early thirties.
She added: “We don’t live, we just exist. It’s hard. I’ll never, ever come to terms with it. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about him.”
“I keep saying: ‘I wonder how he would be as a grown man and if he would have had children or anything’. “I just wish he had a chance to live his life instead of being cut down.”
The nightmare began when Wesley never returned home from the nearby shop to buy sweets.
Within minutes, Liz became frantic because her son had recently been diagnosed with epilepsy and didn’t have any medication with him. She remembered: “I was starting to panic. If he didn’t have his medication for his epilepsy, he could have took a fit any time.
“I was petrified in case he had a fit and he was lying somewhere on the road.
“I got a horrible, horrible feeling. I said, ‘There’s something not right, there’s something not right’.”
Within hours police launched a search and the family made an appeal on TV.
The major breakthrough came when Wesley’s bike was found 20 minutes from his home.
It was then police delivered the crushing news that it was likely he had been abducted.
Liz can still remember being told the devastating revelation by DC Trevor Fordy.
She said: “He got a hold of my hand and he went, ‘I’ve had a look at it and I do honestly believe your son has been abducted’.
“I just looked at Mr Fordy and I burst into tears.”
It then emerged a social worker had contacted police and warned local man McKilligan had been befriending younger lads.
Liz was horrified to learn that McKilligan was a convicted sex offender, who at age 14 was held in a secure unit in Bournemouth for three years.
He had not been added to the Sex Offenders Register because the 1997 Sex Offenders Act came into force after he was released.
Searches of his home uncovered a cheque made out to Wesley.
It was not until the killer was questioned for a second time that he confessed to murdering Liz’s boy. He claimed Wesley suffered a head