Here’s the third in a series of brief round-ups for the end of 2025 for Classics Education in the UK

#3: Jobs for Classics teachers in the UK in 2024-5

I collated the information for these statistics from the publicly available advertisements in the Times Educational Supplement and the Classics Library. Please cite me if you use any of the information in this blog. Any errors are my own.

How many jobs?

Every year it feels like the jobs market is a bit slow. Or some people say ‘There don’t seem to be many jobs about this year!’ But my records from the last twenty years show that there is little difference in the number of posts advertised each year. In Figure 1 above, I’ve chosen to show the academic years 2018-19 to the present, as that is the best data set I have for individual school types. 2021-2023 were, I think, abnormal years due to the pent-up demand caused by the Covid-19 lockdowns.

In 2024-25, my research indicates there were 177 jobs advertised:

• 30 state-maintained comprehensive schools / sixth form colleges

• 8 state-maintained grammar schools

• 120 private secondary schools (including 6 overseas)

• 19 private preparatory schools

There will clearly have been many more overseas schools advertising for classics teachers in their own countries. The 6 overseas schools noted above advertised in the TES. They were International Schools which offered a British curriculum.

When do jobs get advertised?

As you can see from Figure 2 below, Autumn is the slow period, where schools tend only to advertise for temporary posts to cover imminent maternity leave or for posts that haven’t been able to be filled at the tail end of the previous academic year. Those of you who scan the pages of the TES jobs section ‘merely for interest’ will know that the number of jobs being advertised for full time jobs will tend to perk up in around the end of January and early February and peak at the end of March and early April.

Where are these jobs located?

In Figure 3 shows the distribution of schools which advertised for a Classics Education post in the academic year 2024-2025. I have chosen to omit the 6 overseas schools for clarity. In this (and the figures below), the purple markers indicate state-maintained schools, blue markers represent private secondary schools, and green represent private preparatory schools. I have included schools which advertised for full time, part time and temporary staff.

We can see that the majority of posts are in London and the South East. That is not surprising - the population of the city and its traditional cluster of schools which offer Classics Education is well-known. The map also shows the main centres of Classics Education that have been habitually strong – some of the cities of the Midlands and the North West. Most of these are private secondary schools.

Let’s look closer.

In the North West (see Fig. 4), a cluster of state schools recruited several teachers, where Classics for All had been busy developing a local network. Good on them!

In the Central Midlands (see Fig. 5), and in the eastern cities of Nottingham, Loughborough and Leicester, it looks like ex grammar schools (now private schools) have upheld their classics provision. This also seems to be the case in Warwick and the surrounding area.

In the Eastern counties (see Fig. 6), note the huge gap that is Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk (there are one or two schools out here, but not advertising this year), and contrast with the Cambridge and Bedford areas, where there are clusters of state and private schools offering Classics.

In the South West, again (see Fig. 7), there is a cluster of schools around the old cathedral cities such as Gloucester and Worcester, around Bristol, Bath and some ancient school foundations.

In the South East (outside the M25), Figure 8 shows the clusters of schools in places like Tonbridge / Tunbridge Wells, the Surrey Stockbroker belt, and the private schools along the South Coast around Brighton. It shows the gaps, again, in places like Essex and Coastal Kent. My recent blog shows that there are schools which offer Classics there; they simply did not advertise this year.

In London (Fig. 9), there were rich pickings: a range of state and private schools, grammars and preps. There were big holdings in comfortable South West Outer London, in Inner West London and North London, and even a few in Central. There are many state-maintained schools which offer Classics in London - the fact that they are advertising suggests they are in good health in maintaining departments.

As someone who has followed these postings since 2008, I have come to recognise most of the schools in the UK which offer Classics Education. Some schools regularly advertise, every year – they may have high turnover for all sorts of reasons. I cannot divine the reasons, but they are probably nothing more sinister than staff leaving for other employment, promotion and so on. It used to be that staff stayed put for years and years, but I don’t think that is the case now.

Sadly, a few Classics departments have closed in 2025 or reduced their provision. In better news, the schools formerly under the Latin Excellence Programme (for details, see this blog) may have become incentivized to continue offering Latin even though central funding from the Department for Education has been cut.

Classics Departments come and go. I’d say that while there have been a few losses in the last year, they have been made up for by new departments arising. That’s no compensation for those who have lost their jobs, or seen their departments shrunk, of course. On the other hand, if one is able to move around the country, there are jobs available in many places.

Blog #1 was on the 2025 examination entries (all classical subjects, all levels).

Blog #2 was on state-maintained school GCSE entries.

  (c) Steven Hunt 1st January 2026