They are classroom-based, so a pupil taking, for instance, manufacturing, might do work experience in a local factory but would not have to make anything.Last week Sir Ron Dearing, chairman of the Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority, said 40 per cent of the timetable for 14-to 16-year-olds would be freed so that some pupils could pursue vocational courses, while others do the more academic GCSEs. All will continue to do GCSEs in English, maths and science, and short courses in modern languages and technology.Critics say the arrangements will divide pupils into sheep and goats, and could lead to the creation of specialist academic and vocational schools. We accept that the FA have to interview Bruce to clear up the matter.”Now Southampton expect the 37-year-old Zimbabwe goalkeeper to return tomorrow from international duty in Harare to prepare for Saturday’s game against Arsenal.Details, page 40. We view the charges very seriously indeed.” Southampton Football Club and Fifa, the game’s world ruling body, were being told of the decision.Lawrie McMenemy, Southampton’s director of football, said last night: “I’m delighted he’s been allowed to carry on playing. He has 14 days to answer the allegations.Kelly added: “We want to bend over backwards to be fair to him and allow him to answer the charges. But Grobbelaar was innocent until proved guilty and would not be suspended pending the hearing of the charges by an FA disciplinary committee. Bruce Grobbelaar is to face Football Association charges over allegations that he took bribes to fix matches.

The FA yesterday charged the Southampton goalkeeper with “conduct which is improper or liable to bring the game into disrepute” and “acceptance of consideration with a view to influencing the result of a match”.
The FA chief executive, Graham Kelly, said that having considered documents and videos, the FA had concluded there was a case to answer. The regional governor, Pavel Valashin, was reported by Russian television to have ordered the plug pulled on the Plesetsk space centre and factories in the town of Severodvinsk because a local power station has fuel for only two more days.Plesetsk, according to Tass, has launched 40 per cent of the world’s 4,000 satellites. The power cut came only a day after President Boris Yeltsin elevated it to the rank of “state cosmodrome” by Kremlin decree.. Food supplies are dwindling in many remote outposts, while entire towns, including major industrial centres such as Norilsk, have been left without heating in a string of disasters hitting the region in the first month of winter.Yesterday’s power cuts, the most dramatic so far, were in the region of Archangel, 600 miles north of Moscow. At risk is the legacy of one of the great Soviet epics – the settlement of a huge, inhospitable territory stretching from the border with Finland to the Bering Strait.Some 900,000 people have left what Russians call simply “the North” since the start of 1992, and the exodus will accelerate if Moscow fails to relieve potentially life-threatening shortages.

It is the second time in three months that Russia’s armed forces, which run the space programme, have had power to strategic installations cut off.
In September, the nuclear missile command centre near Moscow lost power briefly because of unpaid bills The crisis afflicting the Arctic is less easily solved. A space centre near the Arctic Circle and a nuclear submarine shipyard were plunged into icy darkness yesterday, victims of a power shortage now menacing the 11 million inhabitants of Russia’s far north. With Social Democrat governments in power in Denmark and Sweden, and likely in Finland, the EU is set to take a turn to the left over the next year.Once the Nordic question has been solved, the EU will have to turn to the question of membership for the central European countries who are already banging on the door.EU awkward squad, page 10Leading article, page 15. However, with its insistence on high environmental, social and welfare standards, as well as its resistance to secrecy and closed-door decision-making, it will also find itself on the opposite side of the debate from Britain in many important areas.

Its membership will boost the number of EU neutrals to three (with the Irish Republic and Finland), reinforcing the trend towards a multi-track Europe advocated by John Major.A “no” vote would have been seized on by British Euro-sceptics as proof that membership was not the only option. Sweden will be on Britain’s side when, as a contributor to European funds, it considers EU decisions on free trade and budgetary discipline. Sweden may well prove to be an ally for those EU countries sceptical of deeper integration, such as Britain and Denmark.A neutral state, Sweden is not a member of Nato or the Western European Union. Sweden now joins the EU on 1 January, along with Austria and Finland.