The Department for Education has confirmed that the Latin Excellence Programme (LEP), giving state school students the chance to study the classical language, will be axed in February 2025.
The £4 million scheme was meant to run until 2026, but the government has culled it ahead of time in a bid to plug the £22 billion fiscal black hole left by the Conservatives.
It’s the latest decision by Keir Starmer’s cabinet that has sparked widespread outrage, with academics including Paulina Kewes, who teaches English Literature at the University of Oxford and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, left especially frustrated.
Ms Kewes, who was born in Poland, said that while the debate raging around the axed programme was “relentlessly Anglo-centric”, its real loss would be in “disadvantageing pupils in this country vis-a-vis their European peers”.
“In my birth country, a kid in state secondary school can study Latin and carry it on to matura, or A-Level,” she told Express.co.uk.
“Instead of rolling out Latin in all state schools, the Labour government makes the disastrous decision to cancel the pilot.
“This is not just short-sighted, misguided, classist and harmful to new generations. It is also very bad PR.”
The Latin Excellence Programme was created in 2021 under then-education secretary Gavin Williamson, who said at the time that the language had become “reserved for the privileged few” and was being taught at just 2.7% of state schools, compared to 49% of independents.
As well as providing language lessons, the scheme offered pupils a chance to visit Roman heritage sites across the country and provided grants towards school trips and teacher salaries.
In a letter seen by Schools Week, Future Academies, the trust behind the scheme, described its axing as “incredibly difficult” news which would “cause inevitable and significant disruption to the education of so many pupils and the work of schools”.
It is expected to disproportionately affect students preparing to take their GCSEs in the subject – with an estimated 1,000 children impacted across 29 schools.
The DofE said it was “not an easy decision”, adding: “Given the fiscal situation the new government inherited, there are difficult decisions to take on how money is spent right across the public sector to ensure the government delivers on its priorities.”
