25+ Competition 2025

As part of our Celebrating Classics Campaign, we launched a brand new competition which was open to everybody, across the world, and celebrates how and why we study the ancient past. We wanted you to share your innovative ideas with us as well as your experiences of studying and promoting classical subjects. Read below for details of the Competition, which has now CLOSED.

Classics Education: A Manifesto for Today

Entries in our 25+ Write | Speak | Design Competition will all be judged as one age category, with a separate prize for the winning international entry. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on how classics education and ancient world studies can thrive today!

Who are the Judges?

Professor Peter Frankopan

Peter is an internationally renowned historian, author and broadcaster who has caught the imagination and fascination of a wide audience with his ground-breaking books The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (also published for children) and The Earth Transformed: An Untold History. He is a Professor of Global History at Worcester College Oxford and the Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research. He is also the Chair of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the recipient of the 2024 Classical Association Prize. Peter presents the popular podcast, Legacy, with Afua Hirsch.

Dr Mary-Ann Ochota

Mary-Ann is a broadcaster and author specializing in anthropology and archaeology. She’s a familiar face on TV programmes like History Channel’s Ancient Impossible and Smithsonian’s Mystic Britain and she works on radio, podcasts, magazines and book projects too. Her most recent book, Secret Britain: Unearthing Our Mysterious Past reveals the histories of sites and artefacts from around Britain. Her work is usually about making academic and technical information mean something to the public – whether that’s to inform, influence or entertain.

Sana Van Dal

Sana is the CA’s Grants Officer and currently the Head of Classics at Trinity School in Croydon. She studied Classics at the University of Cambridge and after a short stint teaching English in France, she returned to London where she pursued a career in Public Relations. Having decided to leave the corporate world, she gained an MA in History of Art from University College London in 2014 and then a PGCE in Latin with Classics in 2016. She has been working as a secondary school teacher ever since, and she is particularly interested in the potential of Classics to raise discussions of EDI issues, and passionate about helping students from all backgrounds feel included in their study of Classics.

How do I enter?

To enter, you must:

1. enter as an individual
2. read the Rules below carefully
3. complete this entry form before the deadline (23:59 GMT on 31 January 2025)
4. submit your response to the following statement ‘Classics Education: A Manifesto for Today’

Please complete the form and submit your response at the same time to ensure your entry is correctly processed.

Your response can be ONE of the following:  

Following the instructions on the entry form, your responses must be sent in an email to engagement@classicalassociation.org. In your email you must state your name(s), age and age category, and the type of your response (e.g. manifesto/poster/presentation).

In addition to entering this competition, you may also like to submit a response to our Qualifications Review, as we work with exam boards, teachers and stakeholders to ensure that the views of the teaching community are heard as clearly as possible in order to shape their work both on the current specifications and plans for the future.

• A written manifesto of 500-2000 words (sent as a PDF)
• A poster, which can contain up to 500 words, as well as images (sent as a PDF or jpg)
• A video presentation of maximum 15 minutes (sent as a link to an unlisted YouTube video)

What do I win?

More than £2000 prize money will be shared between winning entrants in the Write | Speak | Design Competitions, with a special prize for the overall 25+ winner and for the best international entry, and shortlisted entrants will receive digital certificates.

Additionally, all entrants will be entered into our free Prize Draw from which random winners will be selected. For a bonus entry into the prize draw, click here.

Rules and Guidance

• The Competition is completely free to enter and you don’t need to be a member of an educational institution, or of the Classical Association, to take part. You can be based anywhere in the world. Entries should be submitted/presented in English (quotes etc. may be their appropriate language), however, posters in any language will be permitted if this would otherwise prevent the entrant from entering the competition. In this case, an accompanying translation into English of all text should be supplied.

• You can define ‘Classics’ and ‘Classics Education’ however you see fit, and you may find our Resources Bank useful. You may draw on a UK context, a global context, or a specific international context.
• You must clearly respond to the competition prompt – ‘Classics Education: A Manifesto for Today’. Your work might combine personal experience with research and analysis; it might take a positive or negative stance, or combine both; we want to hear your ideas and for them to be presented compellingly.

• You must complete all of the entry requirements and ensure you have entered the appropriate age category.

• Your work must be your own and free from plagiarism.

• You must submit before the entry deadline (23:59 GMT on 31 January 2025). We will not accept late submissions.

Further Information

MANIFESTO

• If submitting a manifesto, you may include captioned images and/or infographics – these words will not count towards the overall word limit of max 2000. If you are referencing source material, please include a bibliography of your sources at the end (not included within the word count).
• Word counts under 500 will not be considered for the competition.

POSTER

• If submitting a poster, you must submit either a PDF of the digital poster or a photograph (.jpg form) of the physical poster, in which all parts of your poster can be clearly seen. Do NOT attempt to send the physical poster to the CA.

PRESENTATION

• If submitting a video presentation, this may take the form of a mini lecture, a spoken word piece, or an edited short film or animation.
• Video entries will be judged upon the quality of the content and the delivery of the presentation, not the quality of the filming. Recording on your phone, PC or tablet is perfectly acceptable.
• We encourage you to think about the visual impact of your presentation; if you choose to include slides or images as part of your presentation you must ensure that they are properly credited.   
• Your video presentation must be no longer than 15 minutes in length. We recommend it is at least 8 minutes long. Entries beyond 15 minutes will be ineligible and will not be judged.
• You must upload your video to YouTube unlisted. Information about this is available here.
• In the description box of your video you must state the following: ‘this presentation is an entry for the 2025 CA Competition and the views and opinions in this presentation are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Classical Association’

What will the judges be looking for?

The judges will be looking for signs of creative and pragmatic thinking, originality and personal input, persuasiveness in your pitch and evidence of detailed research.

The judges will give more credit to the content of your submission than to its appearance, but creativity and attention to detail and presentation will certainly not harm your submission.

To find out why other people think Classics is important and what a ‘classical education’ is, explore our Resource Bank.

Contact

Please make sure you have read the rules on this page carefully before entering. If you still have a question, you can contact us at engagement@classicalassociation.org. The date and time of your submission, your identity and the work you have submitted will all be stored, but will not be used for any purpose other than administering and recording the competition. Read our privacy policy here.