It’s been a few months since we gave our supporters an update on how the Save Classics campaign is progressing so here goes…

The Grand Raffle we organised last summer raised over £400 and our tombola/book stall at the Christmas Fayre brought in a further £200 or so. Thanks to everyone who bought tickets or donated prizes or books at these events. Special thanks to colleague extraordinaire Mrs Smith who made the Greek doll for our naming competition. Miss Baker was the winner with the name Evadne. With donations still being made through our crowdfunding page at Save Classics - Just Giving, our current total is £31,686. We shall be having a book/household goods stall at the Car Boot Sale on Sunday 12th May so please do come along and grab a bargain or two.

With the completion of this year’s options/Sixth Form applications process we are very pleased to be able to announce that we have a viable GCSE Latin group for Y9 for the second year in a row and the numbers for A level Classical Civilisation are up on last year with a very healthy 20 students interested in starting the course. The campaign certainly seems to have raised the profile of our subjects both within school and the city more widely.

We are also delighted to be able to report on how some of the money raised will be spent as the project comes to fruition. Following an outstanding set of GCSE Latin results last summer, a small group of 5 students have applied to study Latin at AS level starting in September 2019 and this is the first course that we shall be subsidising. The following year (2020), we shall be dipping into the fund again to subsidise a group of twelve Y10 and Y11 students who have opted for a GCSE in Classical Civilisation. Without the Save Classics fund it simply would not have been possible for the school to offer these qualifications to groups of this size so a massive thank you to everyone who has donated thus far for giving our students these opportunities; we are all immensely grateful.

A number of our Y13 students, several of whom have provided invaluable support to our fundraising efforts over the last eighteen months, have applied to various universities to study the ancient world in one form or another – Classical Studies, Ancient History or Archaeology. We also have our first ever Classics candidate for Oxford this year! We wish all our students the best of luck in this summer’s exams and thank them and their families heartily for all the help they have given to make our campaign so successful.

In other news, Mrs Gill is thoroughly enjoying her new role as Head of Classics at Worksop College and Miss Allen, a former High Storrs student and graduate of Reading University, has hit the ground running as her very capable replacement. We continue to work together to provide opportunities for students in our neck of the woods to access classical subjects.

Miss Gina Johnson