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This article describes some of the main features of classical languages and history learning at the primary school level in England at the current time. It briefly examines the context and education policy background and government and teachers' beliefs in the value and status of classical subjects, especially the Latin language as an aid to learning other languages and as a support for developing and improving students' English literacy. There is some overlap with the literature review co-authored by Holmes-Henderson and Kelly for the British government (Holmes-Henderson and Kelly, 2022) and a recent piece by myself about provision of teaching and resources in the Bulletin of the Council of University Classics Departments (Hunt, 2022a). I hope to develop further some of these ideas and draw out some discussions about resources, pedagogy and learning aims for possible future directions of classical languages learning at the primary level.

In the US the use of extensive reading in Latin for school students to develop vocabulary growth and attain reading fluency is an emerging classroom practice. To meet the demand for resources, a small but growing number of teachers have started to make available self-published short Latin stories or ‘novellas’, designed to provide students with extensive reading material in Latin at an age-appropriate level for novice and intermediate level students. There are now over 100 such short books, written in Latin, on a variety of topics, suitable for beginner and intermediate students (typically of between one and two years taught Latin). This article contains three areas of interest: the rationale, challenges and successes of writing and using these resources in the school classroom; a snapshot survey of a range of publications, to give readers a ‘flavour’ of the materials; and some further reading.

This article describes the ways in which four non-specialist Latin teachers are introducing Latin to their schools1. The interviews reported here took place in four secondary schools in London and the South-East in 2019. The interviews were informal and were held with the teachers while I was consultant on behalf of the charity Classics for All while training non-specialists to introduce Latin into their schools, where no classical subjects had been offered previously. Teachers use Latin to meet Ofsted targets for the uptake of the English Baccalaureate (henceforth EBacc2) and to provide a broad and ambitious curriculum for all students. Resources and subject knowledge provide intellectual challenge and also stimulation. In conclusion I recommend greater support from the Department for Education (DfE) working with subject organisations to develop a coherent strategy for introducing classical subjects in state-maintained schools in order to support DfE and Ofsted objectives.

Trainees were encouraged to tell a mythological story to the class, lasting about ten minutes. They could use props and other visual aids if they wished, but the emphasis was for them to practise speaking before the class, using prompt cards if necessary, and employing all the techniques of a professional oral ‘poet’ – such as gesture, eye contact, tone of voice and so on. There is obviously considerable general interest among younger students about mythology. Locally, interest is captured by the Cambridge School Classics project which puts on an annual Ovid Mythology competition and the website War with Troy is used by several of the schools where trainees are placed. Its use as a stimulus for learning has been well-documented by its author and past PGCE subject lecturer Bob Lister (2005, 2007) and by Walker (2018), a former teacher trainee from the faculty. Some of the Latin textbooks such as Minimus (Bell, 1999) and Suburani (Hands-Up Education, 2020) contain myth episodes and are familiar to the teacher trainees. The GCSE and A Level qualifications often contain mythological subject matter. Khan-Evans (2018) has shown how older students of Classics have retained deep-rooted affection for mythological stories in their earlier schooldays. Research into the power of mythological storytelling as a stimulus for learning, creative arts and even therapy is current, as the Our Mythical Childhood project (2020) has demonstrated. A book of the project's work is eagerly anticipated next year. The recent Troy exhibition at the British Museum has also awoken considerable interest.

The Council of University Classics Departments surveys of 1995 (CUCD, 1995) and 2012 (CUCD, 2012) demonstrated a restricted set of approaches to Latin teaching in UK universities with little evidence of activity outside grammar-translation and graded reading. Despite this, in the 2012 survey, some United Kingdom university tutors made claims for the benefits of experiencing more varied pedagogy, including communicative Latin, in their own previous study and in Summer School Immersion events (Lloyd, 2016a). In schools, a number of challenges continue to provide motivation to move away from current norms of provision (Forrest, 1996; Lister, 2007; Hunt, 2016). Meanwhile, in America, changes in curriculum and methods are being proposed and implemented to meet the challenges of falling enrolment on Latin and other Classics courses.

Despite the challenges which are involved, some secondary schools show determination to get Classics onto the timetable and into their curricular provision. The following three case studies draw on interviews with the people directly involved in doing so: the Principals and the teachers themselves. These experiences were captured at the time when they were getting Classics into their schools. The first is derived from an interview with a qualified specialist Classics teacher, ‘Rachel’, working in London. Latin already had a presence there from when the school had employed a part-time teacher; the remit was the development of a full Classics department. The second is based on interviews with the school head teacher and a non-specialist Modern Languages teacher ‘Yvonne’ who had been employed to start a Classics department from scratch in a school in the Midlands. The third is based on an interview with the Principal of an academy which had decided to introduce Latin not only into her own school with a new teacher ‘George’, but also into one that was not yet built. The respondents’ real names have, of course, been changed.

This article examines how a number of teachers of Classics at secondary school level say they deal with sensitive topics, such as violence, religious belief, death and sex and sexuality. In the secondary school original texts are read partly for improving the students' understanding of the language and partly for the study of other aspects of the ancient society, such as the subject matter and the process of a legal case, for example. Therefore, sensitive topics often arise incidentally during the reading of a text rather than because they are the particular feature of the reading. Should teachers brush past such an topic for fear of causing offence or getting into trouble with school authorities or parents, or should they use the topic to develop their students' understanding of the topic at hand – and if the latter, how far should they go?

Apromenade lesson is when the learners get up and source, identify and evaluate information from materials attached to the walls of the classroom or a corridor or some other space in the school. The students have to walk around the ‘exhibits’ to find out something and note it down as they go. This activity can forms a part of a sequence of tasks in a lesson. It works well for any subject matter which is highly visual, such as images taken from Pompeian wall-paintings, for example, or even for enlarged text selections.

The Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Common Core Framework (CCF) requires all teachers to adapt classroom teaching to support all students (Department for Education, 2024). While the Department for Education's previously-encouraged concept of ‘differentiation’ was well-intentioned, in that tasks were meant to be graded to support and develop all students' learning in a class where there were many different levels of prior attainment, it tended to mean that in practice in the classroom different tasks were often set to cater to the supposed different learning attributes of students. Differentiation has now been superseded by the concept of ‘adaptive teaching’. Adaptive teaching is characterised by teaching that takes account of the range in prior attainment of students and anticipates barriers to learning by providing resources or specific support so that they may all achieve the same intended outcomes. Classics teaching is often characterised by the reading of large amounts of text, both in the original languages of Latin or ancient Greek or in translation. Students in the Classics classroom contain a wide range of prior attainment, cultural experiences and may have barriers to learning, such as Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. This article presents findings of how the use of a blended language approach, involving the digital parsing tools in the Cambridge Latin Course and Suburani Latin course books, improved the quantity of translation of Latin achieved by students of mixed prior attainment and encouraged a more effective use of classroom time to develop deeper comprehension and understanding of the translated texts.

The Classical Association, working with the charity Classics for All, is conscious of the vulnerability of Classics in the secondary education system and wants to understand the reasons behind this. Concern about the decline of classical subjects at GCSE and A Level has been mounting, indicated largely by exam entry data suggesting that entries for classical subjects are low and in the case of the ancient languages in decline.1 The Council of University Classics Departments Bulletin annually publishes statistics for student entries for national examinations at GCSE and A level in classical subjects. But this does not capture the full picture, nor does it represent the other constituent parts of the UK, which have their own examination systems. Therefore, in late 2021 the Classical Association and Classics for All designed a new Classical Studies Survey (the ‘Survey’), to fill in more detailed information about what is going on in schools' classics departments more widely through the UK, across Key Stages 3–5, and to provide practising teachers with an opportunity to make recommendations for future developments in courses for classical subjects. The Survey asked teachers to comment on the current situation for Latin, Ancient Greek, Classical Civilisation and Ancient History, the factors affecting these trends, and what support they considered they would need for Classics to survive in their institutions. This Survey collated data rigorously and enables the Classical Association on behalf of the classics teaching community to make compelling arguments in relation to education policies and examination reform.