Tom needed 37 points for his place at Edinburgh, the equivalent of three As at A-level. This year the giant Whitchurch comprehensive school in Cardiff became one of a handful of state schools to offer the qualification.Mrs Katy Ricks, headteacher of Sevenoaks, a private school which is planning to phase out the A-level by 2006, said the IB has the advantage of being independent from government interference.Eighteen-year-old Tom Brougham at Sevenoaks has just been awarded the maximum mark of 45 in his IB and is now heading for Edinburgh to read medicine. Top universities have long complained that the exam no longer discriminates between top-performing students.Thousands of students now achieve three or four A grades at A-level. In the baccalaureat, by contrast, only two per cent, achieve the top mark.Well-known public schools such as Malvern, Haileybury and King's College School Wimbledon already teach the course.

The top performing North London Collegiate School for girls hopes to offer the qualification in 2004, while Eton College recently announced it too is considering running the baccalaureate alongside A-levels.Last week's publication of A-level results saw a fresh round of complaints that the exam has become "too easy".It was also reported that a pupil at Colchester County High School for girls, Candice Clarke, had failed to win a place to read medicine at Trinity College, Cambridge, despite having five As at A-level. Some of the most prestigious schools in the country are turning to the International Baccalaureate, complaining that the A-level system no longer identifies outstanding candidates and that it bogs down students with unnecessary exams. Forty-nine schools now offer the two-year qualification, which involves a range of compulsory subjects, according to the International Baccalaureate Organisation, the Geneva-based body that runs the exam.From this September, pupils at fee-paying Bedford School will be able to take the IB instead of traditional A-levels, for example. Gabriel becomes a proto-social campaigner, Bathsheba starts a women's branch of the union.. Here is told the story of the madwoman in the attic, Antoinette, the first Mrs Rochester.RebeccaDaphne du Maurier's haunting 1938 tale was revisited in 1993, with Susan Hill's Mrs de Winter, and again in 2001 with Sally Beauman's Rebecca's Tale Beauman fashions a complex past for Rebecca. Both books were critical successes.Far From the Madding CrowdGabriel Oak and Bathsheba Everdene were revisited, 20 years on from where Thomas Hardy left them, courtesy of writer Patricia Mann in 1999. Scarlett grows up, Rhett doesn't.Jane EyreCharlotte Bront? novel was prequelled in 1966 by Jean Rhys, whose Wide Sargasso Sea brought the author enormous critical acclaim at the age of 70 after decades in the literary shadows.

Once asked what he did for his college, Waugh replied, "I drank for it".Both Mr Johnston and Waugh's grandson, Alexander Waugh, are due to take part.Sequels and prequels Gone With the WindMargaret Mitchell's 1936 blockbuster was sequelled, to huge success, in 1991. Scarlett was penned by Alexandra Ripley and has sold more than two million copies. "If God can be said to exist in my version," he said, "he would be the villain."The culmination of the centenary celebrations will be the Eveyln Waugh Centenary conference at Waugh's alma mater, Hertford College, Oxford. Instead of Charles Ryder's relationship with Sebastian Flyte, he seeks to concentrate on the doomed affair between Charles and Julia Flyte.