Sebastian Payne

The case for reform of secondary school exams gained further momentum today with the revelation that the number of schools using Cambridge IGCSEs has increased by 300 per cent since 2010. Michael Gove allowed state schools to enter pupils for these 'tougher' tests two years ago, and the state sector now accounts for almost half of IGCSE entries: But not everyone is enamoured with Gove’s plan to return to more exams and less coursework.

Are flying killing robots about to change our lives? Mary Wakefield interviews technology expert turned thriller writer Daniel Suarez in this week's magazine, who believes the day of killing drones is fast approaching. In our latest View from 22 podcast, Mary examines the fast approaching juncture faced over drone warfare: 'One of these [fast approaching technologies] is giving drones, which are military planes without pilots, the ability to make decisions to kill themselves. At the moment, drones are piloted by remote control operators — young kids with joysticks in the Nevada desert — but they've got the technology now to let the drones decide to kill things.

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The Olympics may just 16 days away but will the spectators be able to find chips? The shocking picture above shows the real effect of the Censorship Olympics. Thanks to a lucrative sponsorship deal with McDonalds, all other catering teams are forbidden from serving chips anywhere within the area of London categorized as Olympic Park — unless they come with fish.   The Soviet-style roadlanes are bad enough, but the right to sell a bag of chips to anyone who wants one is fairly fundamental in Britain — and Nick Cohen writes the cover story tomorrow on how many other fundamental rights have been flogged to the IoC and their sponsors. The result, Cohen says, is a 'corporatist dystopia.

Did those around Gordon Brown create the conditions for the Libor fixing scandal? According to George Osborne, the answer is yes.  In his cover feature this week, James Forsyth speaks to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who takes aim at his opposite number, stating those in the last government were 'clearly involved.' In our latest View from 22 podcast, James discusses how the trail may lead to these key figures from the last government: 'During the 2008 financial crisis, it seems there was a concerted effort to keep Libor low. This prevented banks from being nationalised. But it also raises the question of whether anyone from the last government was involved in these attempts to keep the Libor rate down.

Could the government save £33 billion a year through better use of data? That's the claim of a new report from Policy Exchange, which highlights how the government has failed to modernise and make efficient use of huge amounts data sitting at its disposal. Although playing with information isn't exactly glamorous government, the inefficiency highlighted by this report makes its own case. The report's author Chris Yiu argues: 'Across the public sector, extraordinary quantities of data are amassed in the course of running public services – from managing welfare payments and the NHS, through to issuing passports and driving licences. Finding ways to share or link this data together has the potential to save time for citizens and money for taxpayers.

Has the world become one huge ball of anger? As a follow-up to his book A Bee in the Mouth, Pete Wood examines how ostentatious rage — once the preserve of Americans — is now spreading to Europe and taking over the world in this week's cover feature. In our latest View from 22 podcast, Freddy Gray and Fraser Nelson discuss this growing anger, much of it resonating from technology: 'If you look at internet commenters or trolls, you can see the natural human default position when in front of technology is to be as angry as possible. But only if you are anonymous, the internet has given the cloak of anonymity. If people were forced to give their name they would be more polite. But there is a lot of bile swirling around the internet right now...

A speech earlier this week by unmasked-spy Jonathan Evans has put the threat of cybercrime back into the national consciousness. The MI5 director general spoke at Mansion House earlier in the week to warn of ‘real damage’ caused online — highlighting one London business which suffered a £800 million loss following an attack. He stressed the need to introduce snooping powers: ‘It would be extraordinary and self-defeating if terrorists and criminals were able to adopt new technologies in order to facilitate their activities while the law enforcement and security agencies were not permitted to keep pace with those same technological changes,’ he said.

Primary school children studying subordinate clauses and foreign languages? What an outlandish but suddenly very real idea. Michael Gove announced earlier this week a curriculum reshuffle to restore rigour and aptitude to primary education. But why is liberalising Gove instigating a top-down approach, prescribing what teachers teach?   It’s not the first time that Gove’s policies have become contradictory. Earlier this year, Tristram Hunt MP wrote a magazine article about the Tory divide over forcing secondary schools to teach British history while also increasing their freedom.   The Times’ Alice Thompson (£) provides an answer for these dilemmas in her column this week.