by Stuart Simons 11

Figure 4 - Rose with Jess and Berry! Megan with Roxy. Reading with dogs even during Lockdown!

There also appears to be an increase in students feeling more comfortable reading to the class (moving from 66% up to 80%), which is encouraging. The extra spaces for comment were also taken up well with some highlights below:

'I love having the dog around, because when you are focusing hard on a book, it is always nice to stroke the dog every now and then.'

'I have loved have [sic] the dog in but I don't really thinks [sic] that she helps with my reading. I do love the company though. I also love how calm and sweet she is and she does make me smile when I see her.'

'I really enjoy the dog coming in and I am always excited for my reading lessons.'

'I think I like the dog being there now I am used to it. I am scared of dogs but sometimes it is a little scary when she is excited. I still read in the lessons but I do notice she is there. I don't mind either way, but it does help me build my confidence slowly around dogs, so I do find it useful because I can always quietly read and it won't distract me too much.'

'I don't really notice Vera too much but she's a nice addition to the room and I enjoy having her here.'

'I think it’s very good to have Vera here because whenever i find it hard to concentrate i watch Vera for a bit and that helps reset my concentration'

'Great to have her really like her but can sometimes be slightly distracting'

'I don't notice that the dog is in the room until I lift my head up and see the massive fluff ball but when I do look at the massive fluff ball I always think that it's cool that there is a dog in the room where I'm supposed to learning [sic] but I do sometimes think that it is distracting because I would be in the middle of reading a sentence but then I would look down at the dog and lose my place on the page.'

'I really like having a dog around whilst reading because it is really calming!'

It is really encouraging to read the pupils’ comments, those positive, reflective and even critical, as it helps me analyse the process and refine it ahead of next year. A more uniform experience for pupils in their reading lessons would be ideal, as many noted the positive impact the 'Well-being' dogs had on their reading experience. Clearly, logistically this simply would not be possible; however, we can certainly look at getting a dog into at least one reading lesson for every class. There was real joy communicated through the final questionnaire and the long process of this action research has proved worthwhile. Stepping back, there have been so many variables involved in trying to enrich the pupils’ reading experience, but the presence of 'Well-being' dogs has been a positive one and I hope to continue to build on these foundations.

As a final note, I’ve included the reflections of a Year 13 student, highlighting her positive experience with the presence of these dogs – 'I really appreciate having the "Well-being" dogs in school, especially Molly and Vera when we have them in our tutor time. I think it gives us something else to focus on as a bit of a distraction and relax instead of stressing over work. I also think seeing "Well-being" dogs around school and just being able to give them a stroke or a cuddle is really useful for all of us because it leaves us feeling happier and more relaxed.'

BIO Stuart Simons is Head of English at Berkhamsted and is passionate about reading and education. He specialised in AfricanAmerican Literature and Critical Theory whilst at Sussex University. In his spare time, he likes walking or running behind his Golden-Doodle Vera and supporting, through thick and thin, the once-mighty Arsenal.

(Re)finding the Main Verb: Ancient Languages and Educational Inequality

Though it would be reductive to claim that Classics-the study of ancient (principally the Greek and Roman) languages, literatures, and cultures-has enjoyed a truly stable place in the academy at any point in recent history, it is certainly true that the last year or two have been a period of especial challenge and uncertainty for the future of the field. Social media, and in particular Twitter, have housed a sustained and animated debate around what Classics can and should offer us in the twenty-first century. Though the conflict is complex and is closely related to the current drive to decolonise the curriculum, a lot of the issue in Britain really comes down to the central problem of how Classics may or may not perpetuate educational inequality at all age levels. This problem is nowhere clearer than in the parallel issue of whether ancient languages should retain their central position in the way Classics is taught and assessed. It is this question that I will attempt to deal with here.

Although some see Latin and Ancient Greek as inevitably gatekeeping institutions which restrict access to a niche field, closer inspection of the contemporary situation in the UK suggests that the linguistic element of Classics offers a unique opportunity to renovate the subject. Though its elitist past is undeniable, Classics also has a rich history of democratisation (Hall and Stead, 2020); reaffirming the value of ancient languages, I will argue, is one effective way to continue this tradition which, alongside the denigration of the humanities tout court, finds itself in a precarious but far from hopeless position. Neville Morley realises that '[w]hile masquerading as a pedigree animal, [Classics] was always, in reality, a mongrel—fighting for territory with other, larger, and more popular disciplines' (2018, 68), but this amorphousness can be in part resolved through a characterisation of Classics which places Latin and Ancient Greek at its core. It is important to note that this redefinition needn't exclude the cultural and literary-critical strands of Classics which have been developing over the last century, or signal a complete return to the continental philological bent which Bulwer describes as a 'rigorously grammatical pedagogic method' and depicts as alive and well in contemporary Europe (2018, 67). Rather, a broad Classics curriculum which endorses and foregrounds rather than regrets and diminishes its dependence on ancient languages can work towards dealing with the socio-political scrutiny which it is undergoing. Drawing on recent pedagogical scholarship and my own experiences in the Latin classroom (as a student at Berkhamsted, an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford, and a volunteer TA elsewhere), I will make the case that '(re)finding the main verb' in both Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 5 settings works against educational inequality, before briefly considering how these claims relate to pedagogical approaches. Ultimately, I will argue that recovering the historic emphasis on ancient languages in Classics can help secure and enhance its future.

Educational inequality in the UK is as prevalent and relevant at the Primary level as it is at the Secondary level, particularly given that it is during those ages that essential skills such as literacy, oracy, and numeracy are initially developed. In recent years, this age-bracket has been targeted by organisations which realise the potential which Classics possesses to enhance the

development of such primordial skills. The organisation Classics in Communities was established to make the most of the curriculum reforms in 2014 which, for the first time, allowed ancient languages to be chosen in the place of MFL for children aged from six to eleven. Charities such as The Iris Project and The Latin Project are working to facilitate the study of Latin in Primary Schools while the AHRC-funded ACE (Advocating Classics Education) is assisting the public perception of such schemes. These programmes are a cause for hope not only because of their frisson of activity over the last few years, but more importantly as a consequence of the evidence they are providing that ancient languages have a crucial role to play in ameliorating educational disparity. Holmes-Henderson, Hunt, and Musié in their seminal survey of these efforts, Forward with Classics, note that '[i]nitial analysis of the data reveals positive trends in the development of literacy skills, when a classical language is used as the medium for (or supplement to) literacy learning' (2018, 3), which suggests that the benefit of offering Classical languages to Key Stage 2 is not simply that it shares around cultural capital historically denied to the state-maintained sector but that it has a peripheral impact on attainment and development. Far from perpetuating inequality, ancient languages are thus beginning to offer a powerful tool to increase educational opportunity early on in students' lives, and I have been lucky enough to witness this first-hand, having spent a week in 2019 and a week in 2020 as a volunteer TA with The Latin Programme teaching in inner-city schools. One salient memory is a lesson in which we were using the genitive case in Latin (which mainly indicates possession) to explain possessive apostrophes in English. By way of brief explanation, Latin marks the case and number of its nouns with inflections such that there are specific endings for nominative singular, nominative plural, genitive singular, and genitive plural— for one group of nouns these are <us>, <i>, <i>, and <orum> in order. While English does a similar thing, it's a far more complex paradigm given that all of these four depend on a specific combination of the letter <s> and an apostrophe—in order, <>, <s>, <'s>, and <s'>. Teaching the English paradigm through the Latin one was a remarkable experience, especially with classes in which a substantial proportion of the students had acquired English as a second language: using translation exercises from English into Latin and vice versa enabled the students to get their head around a deeply confusing

area of English morphology and orthography. This was strong evidence for me that ancient languages have a real practical value in democratising Primary education as well as they redistribute cultural capital. This utility is not far from what Morley realises was perceived in Renaissance humanism: 'The usefulness of Latin in this context was that it allowed communication [...] across linguistic boundaries, rather than because it gave access to the treasury of ancient 'Classics as thought—and so it was seen as a basic skill associated with one's schooldays' an educational (2018, 6). Thus, the current efforts to deploy Latin to socially beneficial ends discipline has been in state-maintained primary schools suggest that ancient languages are tools one of the best of for improving standards of education in all at radically a tangible and deeply important way. reinventing itself' Though teaching ancient languages at Key Stage 2 addresses inequalities in Mary Beard literacy, the place of Latin and Ancient Greek in the pre-university Key Stage 5 context is one that has implications for inequalities in access to higher education, particularly to the most prestigious universities. Currently, A Levels in Latin and Ancient Greek are almost entirely taught in independent or selective schools. The fiftieth CUCD Bulletin entitled 'A Level Classics poverty' shed light on the scale of the problem: 'Without change and targeted support, the subjects may simply die in the state-maintained sector' (Hunt and Holmes-Henderson, 2021, 18). Latin A Level, for example, is taken by 76% independent school candidates and those candidates are heavily concentrated in London and the South East (Hunt and Holmes-Henderson, 2021, 2-4). This has had an impact on the number of students who apply to and obtain positions on Classics courses at competitive universities, leading to a cycle of privilege and exclusivity in Classical Higher Education which, in reality, finds its genesis at Key Stages 4 and 5. Attempts have been made to rectify the situation at the university and at pre-university levels. The Classical Civilisation A Level has been championed as a solution, and Khan-Evans has shown that the course, which has no language component and teaches texts such as The Odyssey in translation, is particularly popular with learners who haven't experienced the study of Classics beforehand (2018). In combination with this Key Stage 5 opportunity, many universities are now offering Classics courses which integrate the teaching of Latin and/or Ancient Greek ab initio: the Oxford Course 2 programme has become a well-documented example of this. Yet both the recent CUCD bulletin and my