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The Languages Ladder-a new framework for accrediting language proficiency-is a core element of the National Languages Strategy. This paper presents Asset Languages, the system being developed by Cambridge Assessment to implement the Languages Ladder, aiming to set it apart from existing qualification frameworks by accrediting clearly defined functional language skills and providing motivation and support for learning. The paper discusses the challenges of creating a framework which validly serves these two purposes, referring to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) as a model for the Languages Ladder. The scaling and standard-setting methodology adopted is briefly described. The learner groups catered for by the inclusive Asset Framework differ widely, and comparing them within a common proficiency frame of reference, although a valuable aim, requires us to think clearly about these differences, giving due consideration to specific features of languages, and of learner groups.

Medieval feoffments to the uses of a last will provided, in effect, a power to devise freehold land, otherwise generally impossible at common law. The Statute of Uses 1536 put an end to this mechanism, and in 1540 the Statute of Wills provided, within limits, a substitute power to devise. But conveyances inter vivos upon trust for the performance of wills continued to be made after 1540; and the distinction in practice between such trusts and wills was less clear than might be supposed: wills under the statutory power were understood as conveyances; executors were frequently trustees in a narrow sense; and the perception that executors were, in a broader sense, trusted, had substantive effects. In understanding wills, trusts and trusting after the Statute of Uses, distinctions between those who are 'trustees' and those who are not, or between conveyances upon trust and wills, may be an essential starting-point in bringing order to the sources, but cannot fully reflect the complexity of contemporary arrangements.The Statute of Uses 1536 1 was at times described in sixteenth-century Chancery pleadings as the 'statute for the extinguishment of uses and wills'. 2 The common law not permitting freehold land to be devised, the desire to divert wealth in that form from the heir was at the heart of the development of the pre-statute use. As Professor Milsom has put it, 'uses and devises had probably grown together', and the Statute of Uses 'had abolished both together. The Statute of Wills had revived the devise, but made it operate directly at law and not through the old mechanism.'

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