There are four principal reasons why we think all Edwardians should encounter Classics, and the Latin language particularly: • It is intrinsically interesting. In their early terms, students will learn how an inflected language operates, and the ‘otherness’ of that code – with its satisfying patterns and structures – is in itself rewarding and intriguing. And that’s before we get to the myths, the monsters and the marching armies. • It is a literacy course. We would argue that doing Latin is the best way to get better at English because Latin has a more transparent grammatical makeup and it trades in concepts like subordination and stems more transparently than English grammar – which can be confusingly haphazard, and partially understood. And the ‘otherness’ of Latin, and the ‘double otherness’ of Greek, help us to distinguish the characteristics of our language more clearly. In other words, because Greek and Latin are so alien, conceptually, we are forced to engage more thoughtfully with what exactly makes English, ‘English’. • It underpins modern languages. Latin gives you greater access – as a ‘meta-language’ – to its modern descendants in the Indo-European language family. This means the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian) in the case of Latin. In the case of Classical Greek, which is offered from Upper Middles – this means Modern Greek and Russian, whose Cyrillic alphabet overlaps with Greek. • It unlocks a cultural legacy. Latin and Greek are not spoken languages, they are ‘corpus languages’: we study them because they unlock texts which have shaped our world and continue to bear a huge influence on the way our politicians communicate, the culture we consume on Netflix, and our notions of right and wrong. It is no surprise that the culture of ancient Greece, for example – gave us the words drama, politics, history, climax, music, museum, comedy, mania, economy, idea, eureka, philosophy, metropolis, chorus, enigma and hippopotamus – is rather interesting and important. Latin and Greek are both available at either Higher or Standard levels as part of the IB Diploma. The IB courses involve the study of either Greek or Latin literature in its cultural context, building on the linguistic and literary skills that have been practised at GCSE. In addition to two examined papers on language and literature, Latin and Greek students also completed a non-linguistic research dossier on a classical topic of their choice. Higher-level candidates also complete prose composition exercises. Students who have chosen to study Latin or Greek at IB are given priority booking for the biannual Greek trip. We have a yearly stream of boys applying to study Classics at university and there is full Oxbridge provision, including twice-a-week extension classes joint with KEHS, and mock interview practice internal and external.