Instead, what worried analysts yesterday was the notion of 'late cylicality' - that the weakening macroeconomic conditions would feed into budget cutbacks for the key education businesses.

A decade ago, provincial governments cut medical-school enrolments, partly because of budget cutbacks, partly because they felt there were enough doctors in the pipeline.

The number of health bureaucrats earning more than the prime minister has more than doubled in a year, despite budget cutbacks and pay freezes for nurses.

This was done while government was imposing budget cutbacks.

Due to budget cutbacks, conventional sampling was reinstated with a return to the previous low grade results.