OCR to cancel AS Latin & Classical Greek from 2027

AS qualifications – well into the doldrums

Thursday night and a message pops up on my WhatsApp: "It’s like they’re trying to harm our numbers," a teacher colleague sends, along with a screen shot of the news that the OCR examinations board has decided, out of the blue, to withdraw AS Latin and Classical Greek. Final exams for these levels will be in June 2027.

The withdrawal of key exams is not reserved just for Latin and Classical Greek, as the OCR Subject Update shows. And it is not altogether surprising: Michael Gove’s decoupling of the AS from the A2 examinations (in the name of ‘wider reading’ for the full A level) has meant a catastrophic decline in opportunities for students of all kinds to keep on studying after the GCSEs while they decided really where their heart lay. I know that back in the dim and distant past, students like myself chose only 3 A levels, making the definitive choice post O levels and thinking ahead to the University. Times have changed and the AS turned into a way of encouraging students to stick with subjects a little longer: many did 4 AS qualifications and then focused more on the second part of them in the Upper Sixth. It was by such means that minority subjects such as ours maintained a further year’s toehold in the Sixth Form – and often teachers found that students continued beyond AS into the full A level.

Today the AS is a stand-alone qualification – roughly half an A level. It continues to provide a similar toehold: even if the student does not anticipate taking a full A level in Latin, say, they can at least keep going at Latin for a further year and take the AS alongside the standard fare of 3 A Levels in other subject areas. Although the number of students taking the AS nationally is small, keeping open small Classics departments at Sixth Form is often dependent on attracting a sufficient number of students some of whom take AS and some of whom take the full A level.

As another teacher colleague says, of his school:

"Many of our Latin class in Year 12 take Latin as 'an extra' as they have enjoyed it at GCSE (both internal and external students joining in the sixth form), but have ambitions in other subjects. Latin AS has been very important in keeping the full A level as a subject on timetable. Quite often, some change their minds and having set out with the intention of only taking Latin AS, choose to take the full A level."

It is said that OCR has undertaken a review and studied the slow decline of the AS in all subjects. In time, they reckon that there will be so few entries for Latin and Classical Greek that the expense of maintaining the AS exams and the difficulty of ensuring their validity over such a small cohort will not make it worth the while. They express sorrow that Gove’s reforms have led us to this place and they decry that the present Minister for Education, Bridget Phillipson, does not seem to think that this policy needs to be unpicked. It is curious that the reforms to the EBacc will mean greater variety of subjects for students to take, but the stranglehold of the A levels is left untouched. AS provided some breathing space.

What is to be done?

We could continue to exert pressure on OCR – and maybe encourage more people to offer AS than we currently do. Perhaps OCR might promote the AS more and better.

As a subject community, we can do the same (and I am well aware that there are groups of subject experts currently working on proposals for the reformed qualifications for Classics when the Department for Education finally gets round to it).

OCR could encourage the Phillipson to think more carefully about the needs of the students at Sixth Form level and how the AS fits into the ‘ladder’ of qualifications which is often mooted – a bit like the CEFR model. It would be a shame to lose it if we could only just have it back.

Universities need to be encouraged to recognise the achievements of those who have often taken the AS in difficult circumstances or against the odds.  They should appreciate the AS more than they currently seem to. Surely it is better for an applicant to have AS Latin than no Latin at all?

We need to make the point that AS often attracts sufficient numbers to make a Sixth Form Classics department viable: take the Latin AS away and there may not be any Latin A levels at all in some schools.

It may be that OCR’s removal of AS will remove some Sixth Form Classics Departments altogether.

We need to kick up a fuss now.