It seems like a long time since the concept of an “adult GCSE” was floated back in May by Dame Sally Coates in her review of prison education, commissioned by then justice secretary Michael Gove - remember him?

But while the review’s recommendations were accepted in full by the government at the time, the ministerial overhaul since then has made it damn near impossible to keep track of what’s going on and who’s doing what.

Certainly, Dame Sally told TES in the summer that she’d been informed by schools minister Nick Gibb - not exactly renowned for his love of progressive ideas - that it wasn’t a goer.

Ofqual also told TES that, unless it heard otherwise from the new tranche of ministers, it had no plans to change its rule that all new GCSEs should be “linear, with exams taken in the summer at the end of the course”.

But a written statement quietly pushed out last week by the government contained a revelation that could be a game-changer.

From 1 October, policy responsibility for “education and training provision for those subject to adult detention in England will transfer from the Department for Education to the Ministry of Justice”.

The MoJ has already committed to putting the Coates review’s recommendations into practice. And, with the policy proposal now freed from Gibb’s shackles, FErret can’t help but feel that the odds on this coming to pass might well have improved. Especially when you consider that the new justice secretary is none other than Liz Truss - a junior minister under Gove at the DfE, who is reportedly keen to continue his radical plans for reforming prison education.

There’s also talk of a single awarding body being given the job of producing functional skills qualifications designed purely with offender learners in mind - a stepping stone to the eventual creation of a modular GCSE?

But adult education remains the DfE’s remit - there’s no way such a major change in policy could be pushed through without them. FErret reckons this is an issue worth keeping an eye on.