Labour’s axing of Latin lessons is an act of cultural vandalism

The Labour government seems determined to undermine excellence in schools. The Department for Education has announced that from February it will be terminating its Latin Excellence Programme, which taught Latin to over 5,000 pupils, as part of a cost-saving measure. The cutback comes a month after a review suggested ‘middle-class bias’ should be removed from the curriculum and that ‘high-brow pursuits’, such as ‘visits to museums, theatres and art galleries’, might be replaced with more ‘relatable’ activities such as graffiti workshops.

The decision to effectively end Latin lessons in some state schools is particularly hard to bear. Latin helps create intellectually curious, interesting and interested students; it gives them a rich interior world and the opportunity to imaginatively experience another time that is so like, and so very unlike, our own. It introduces them to new literature, history, theology, rhetoric, culture; it is brilliant at developing both logic and language acquisition.