ABOUT US

We are Hands Up Education, a not-for-profit organisation and international community of practice, creating and sharing high quality teaching resources. Our creative, passionate and dedicated team are leading change and growth in the teaching of Latin and Classics.

Our mission is to increase the teaching of Latin and Classics through creating innovative, up-to-date and highly accessible resources fit for a modern curriculum. As a team, we are good friends and thoroughly enjoy working together, drawing on our combined experience as teachers, leaders of national Classics and Latin development programmes, researchers and authors. We also have our very own in-house illustrator and software developer who also happen to be classicists, making us well placed to develop both print and digital teaching and learning resources of the highest standard.

As a community interest company we benefit from being able to move swiftly, with few overheads to make great things happen. For example between 2017 and 2020, we were able to plan, create, trial and launch Suburani, a new Latin Course, offering a much more diverse and relevant study of Latin than ever before which is rapidly being adopted in schools across the UK and US. Our flexible, collaborative model and genuine passion for this work means we can ensure this course will be continually improved and developed. We also reinvest our profits for the development of further resources for Latin and Classics like our free-to-access Primary Latin Course.

Find out more about our team below – together, we look forward to supporting your teaching for many years to come.

Laila trained as a Classics teacher in the Netherlands, and has worked in schools there and in the UK. She has extensive experience supporting and growing the teaching of Classics in the UK, managing and delivering the DfE-funded KS4 Latin initiative in 2014-2016, authoring the 2015 report "Who is Latin for? Access to KS4 Latin qualifications”, and creating the Romans in Focus videos (www.RomansinFocus.com). As a trainer and teacher Laila works to support Latin teaching in primary and secondary schools. Laila’s current work focuses on the Primary Latin Course, of which she is the co-author. She is also excited to be a contributor to the International Baccalaureate’s DP Classical Languages curriculum review.

LAILA

Will has been working with students and teachers since the early 90s as a teacher, author, researcher, lecturer, adviser and trainer across Europe and North America.

In 2003, Will rescued the failing £5M DfE-funded KS3 Latin initiative and subsequently doubled the number of UK secondary schools which offer Latin at KS3. In 2008, in conjunction with WJEC, he developed a new Latin assessment system which increased Latin uptake at KS4 by 20%. Between 2010 and 2016 he authored the North American 5th edition of the Cambridge Latin Course.

Will is now working on a range of initiatives at Hands Up to continue to increase access to Classics in schools.

WILL

Tony is a classicist who develops software for reading and learning Greek and Latin. He worked with the Cambridge School Classics Project for over twenty years and developed the interactive resources on the CSCP website. He wrote the digital activities for the Eton Greek Software Project, and has developed programs for learning Latin and studying Latin literature for the Open University. He worked with Oxford University Press for many years to produce electronic dictionaries for a wide range of languages, and made the electronic Pocket Oxford Latin Dictionary with a built-in morphological analyser using data licensed from OUP.

TONY

Hannah is a classicist and experienced illustrator who loves bringing the ancient world to life for students of all ages. She has developed and illustrated both print and digital learning resources and created the Romans in Focus  videos (www.RomansinFocus.com). Working in EdTech startups she has experience of designing and bringing new products to market. She recently co-authored and illustrated the Primary Latin Course and continues to promote and support the course in schools.

HANNAH