The long-awaited changes to Ireland’s national curriculum and assessment of Ancient Greek and Latin have now been finalised.
Blog post by Aryn Penn, 28/4/2025.
A guiding principle of these curricular changes was to try and capture the enriching, interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional classroom experience of learning a classical language and how this experience of examining the past also cultivates skills and levels of understanding that are relevant in today’s world.
The sample examination papers showcase this intention with questions about curse tablets and Apple Music’s ‘Alpha’s’ playlist appearing alongside ‘canonical texts’. This new, more varied approach to assessment reflects the new Leaving Certificate Ancient Greek and Latin Specifications, which have shifted emphasis away from technical mastery of unseen translation to an emphasis on reading a text. Here a ‘text’ is not limited to literature, but any piece of writing in the classical language, from any time period, and likewise ‘reading’ is ability to understand it within the wider context of the ancient world and appreciate how texts can shed light on values, traditions and experiences of people living in ancient Greece and Rome. This focus on close-reading skills is facilitated through two main areas of the Specification: a coursework component and an in-depth study of the ‘Capstone Text’.
The coursework component lets students discover their own areas of interest and delve into language-centred analysis on a topic of their own choosing that relates to an annually issued framework. The Capstone Text is a prescribed selection of a manageable and meaningful amount of Ancient Greek or Latin, which in its current prescription is 220 lines for Higher level and 120 lines for Ordinary level of Euripides’ Medea for Ancient Greek and Aeneid I and IV for Latin. The study of these Capstone Texts centres on the ‘breakdown of the relationship’ between Jason and Medea, Aeneas and Dido, and involves exploring how these texts sit in the literary, cultural and historical context for their original audiences and their reception up to today’s world.
These new courses, which start teaching next year, have been designed to allow students to begin ab initio in 5th year of Senior Cycle or to progress from the Junior Cycle Classics curriculum. This marks another break from tradition, aimed to broaden the uptake of these courses and widen the access to classical languages beyond the traditional demographic, the fee-paying, all boys, voluntary secondary schools. It is hoped that these new courses will inspire a new crop of classicists to consider a career in teaching in Ireland and also attract current teachers who are classics enthusiasts to upskill in the classical languages for a new crop of students.
More information available at:
New Specifications:
https://www.curriculumonline.ie/senior-cycle/senior-cycle-subjects/ancient-greek/
https://www.curriculumonline.ie/senior-cycle/senior-cycle-subjects/latin/
Sample examination papers:
https://www.examinations.ie/scr/
Teacher Association:
Examples of new approaches to assessing student engagement
