Big Latin fight in the UK; meanwhile 40 percent of schools report difficulty in finding Latin teachers

Remember this and this post on how easy it is to get a job as a Latin teacher for someone who is qualified? It seems there is still a lot of difficulty in finding Latin teachers for schools, with 40% reporting difficulty in finding staff to teach the language. This number takes place amidst a scuffle between mayor Boris Johnson of London and the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls over the language's importance. The two being from different political parties and an election soon, the debate is a lot more heated than it might otherwise be. Talk of a mayor head-butting a minister is a tad silly, but it's preferable to Latin not appearing in the news at all.

Some links on the debate between the two over the importance of Latin: here is one on Johnson saying he should head-butt the minister over calling Latin unimportant, and here's another one on Johnson asking schools to add Latin to the state curriculum. The second link shows that 40% of independent primary schools teach the language, compared with just 2-4% of public ones.

Also, according to this 75% of UK state schools with Latin would like to be able to teach more of it to their students, and this school is looking for a Latin teacher as we speak.