Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that changes to examination qualifications now under discussion do not set back the expansion of classics teaching in maintained schools.

Our reform programme for GCSE and A levels is intended to ensure they are demanding and more rigorous. We have taken account of a wide range of concerns in ensuring that the final content for ancient language GCSEs provides a suitable preparation for further study. The published content for A and AS levels has been designed to allow the development of new stand-alone AS qualifications, including for ancient languages, that can be co-taught with the A level. We are supporting secondary schools by funding £500,000 of training for non-specialist teachers of Latin in state schools, which will to help them get to grips with the GCSE standard.