Classics 

More detail can be found about all of our academic faculties under the Curriculum sections of our website that cover the Third Form Curriculum, the Fourth Form Curriculum (leading up to GCSE) and the Sixth Form Curriculum.

Boys at Shrewsbury School have the chance to study both Latin and Classical Greek from scratch up to Oxbridge Entrance level during their time at the school – as well as the chance to take the non-linguistic Classical Civilisation course to GCSE and ‘A’ level.

All boys must take Latin (and may take Greek) in their first year and many of them opt to continue either or both into the Fourth Form. Classical Civilisation – with its mixture of literature and culture, Homer and the Olympics, Tragedy and I, Claudius – is a popular choice for many boys who find the languages hard but the subject fascinating. Once in the Sixth Form the same choices continue. Any boy can take Latin, Greek and Classical Civilisation to AS and A2 level and many of them choose to do so, finding that the languages they started at prep. schools can now equip them to read Virgil and Homer in the original, and that even in translation the ancient texts can speak to them afresh.

Shrewsbury has always produced significant numbers of students at Oxbridge reading for the Classics tripos or Greats - Ed Clive of Ridgemount recently achieved a double first in Classics at Christ Church and in 2009 Rob Hughes of Ingrams won the de Paravicini prize for the 2nd highest first in Classical Honour Mods at Brasenose College Oxford. We also nowadays see almost as many going for the newer courses at Oxbridge in Ancient and Modern History, Classics and English, and Classical Archaeology and Ancient History. Many of these candidates cut their Oxbridge teeth on the big national essay competitions: in September 2010 George Ellis won the national Gladstone Prize - the UK's premier essay prize in Classics - for his essay "Courting controversy: Shakespeare's use of Ovid in Venus and Adonis"; in the each of the previous three years, one of our pupils won the runner up prize. Other Oxbridge candidates find archaeological digs to occupy their summer months and every year one or two pupils go off to Bryanston for the annual Greek Summer School. The faculty also organises a joint Sixth Form History and Classics trip to Italy each year.

The faculty is now housed in a refurbished building of its own and it continues to flourish in the 21st century rooms it now occupies.

A Level Results – Classical Civilisation

GCSE Results – Classical Civilisation

A Level Results – Latin

GCSE Results – Latin

A Level Results – Greek

GCSE Results – Greek