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What We Do
On this page: Staff | Official objects | Trustees | Patrons | Academic Advisory Council Aims and Programmes
Our work falls into two main groups: the services we provide for the public, and our research and educational programmes. We provide two main services. First, we offer primary education for children who are falling behind at school and unable to afford the most costly private alternatives; and second, we provide teaching materials and speakers for schools. Our research and educational work is designed to facilitate informed public debate on important issues of the day by producing objective and balanced publications and arranging seminars and conferences to stimulate mutual learning through open discussion. PRIMARY EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN FALLING BEHIND AT SCHOOL Supplementary Schools Many primary school pupils are not learning the basics. On Saturdays and after school hours during weekdays we provide lessons in English and maths for children who have fallen behind. We use a no-frills approach which concentrates on high quality teaching along traditional lines to enable children to master essential skills quickly. We emphasise small class sizes, reading through synthetic phonics and mental arithmetic. Civitas operates twenty supplementary schools: eleven in London, with the others in Yorkshire, the North East, Birmingham and Norfolk. The schools provide additional English and maths lessons for over 500 primary-aged children each week. Our pupils tend to come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Although many of the parents have high aspirations for their children, they often lack the skills and experience to help them continue learning outside regular school hours. The aim of the project is to encourage disadvantaged children to be high-achievers, to reach their full academic potential and thereby to open up new opportunities. Class sizes are small and our dedicated teachers use traditional teaching methods. The children also benefit from a two-week summer school and half-term classes. The effect of the schools on the lives of the children is noticeable in the short-term, and in the long-term it is incalculable. As a result of attending the schools we hope and expect that the children will do better at school and university and find themselves with more options when they join the world of work. We hope they will become prosperous and responsible citizens. The demand for what the schools are offering is effectively limitless and we have hundreds of children on our waiting lists. To assist policy making by both the public and third sectors we aim to make the classes replicable and to ensure that as far as possible they can be scaled up. We are actively increasing the number of supplementary schools. More detail can be found here. Other Education Projects Children who have been excluded from school are often completely failed by the system. From 2005 until July 2010, as part of a joint project with the London Boxing Academy (LBA), we taught English, maths and information and communications technology (ICT) to teenagers who had been excluded from school. The aim was to reach 14-16 year-olds, who had often been in trouble with the police, by offering boxing and fitness training. Our role was to teach English, maths and other GCSE subjects. More detail can be found here. The co-founder of the LBA, Chris Hall, has now started a new project for similar young people, the Footsteps Football Academy, also in Haringey, for which we provide some financial support. Civitas facilitated and supported the setting up of the New Model School Company (NMS), a not-for-profit company, independent from Civitas, which aims to make excellent traditional education available at a more affordable cost. Through the NMS we helped to establish a primary school in London, Maple Walk School, with the aim of keeping the fees as low as economically possible. Although the starting of the NMS was initially facilitated by Civitas, it has never been a subsidiary. It is an independent company funded by independent shareholders and private trusts. More detail can be found at the New Model School Company website. Due to the generosity of one of our donors, we also run a dyslexia bursary scheme for children with special learning difficulties. TEACHING MATERIALS AND TALKS FOR SCHOOLS We supply schools with speakers and teaching materials in two areas: Britain’s relationship with Europe and the role of the family and marriage in a free and democratic society. The European Union: As part of our continuing effort to ensure that schools are supplied with objective materials about the EU we provide a network of speakers willing to talk to schools, whether in normal lessons or lunchtime or after-school meetings. Our speakers' panel now comprises over 190 lords, MPs, MEPs, journalists, academics, business leaders and political activists. Civitas has arranged over 870 EU talks and debates during the past three academic years. In March 2009 we held a fourth conference for over 300 sixth formers who are studying subjects that cover the EU debate. Factsheets have been prepared for use in schools, covering topics such as the CAP and the impact on the developing world. Their preparation is overseen by independent advisers from schools and elsewhere to ensure objectivity. They are free at our website (www.civitas.org.uk/eufacts) and were downloaded over 79,000 times in 2008 and are currently being used in over 650 schools with sixth forms, which is about a quarter of the total number.The remarks of this teacher in Lincoln are typical: ‘It's good to see an organisation that seems to appreciate the needs of schools by supplying usable material instead of just 'ideas'!’ Family and Marriage: The main school subject in which the issue of the family and marriage is raised is Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE). We supply educational materials, including lesson notes, for teachers of PSHE. Several factsheets have proved popular, either in hard copy or via our web site. In calendar year 2008, just over 200,000 copies of the factsheets were downloaded by schools. The pamphlet, Does Marriage Matter?, is also in demand with 2,500 downloads in 2008. It sets out the social science evidence about family, marriage and the consequences of family breakdown. Click here for factsheets for teachers and our programme of school talks about the EU. RESEARCH - IMPROVING THE STOCK OF PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE Facilitating Informed Public Debate We facilitate informed public debate by providing accurate factual information on the social issues of the day, publishing informed comment and analysis, and bringing together leading protagonists in open discussion. Civitas never takes a corporate view on any of the issues tackled during the course of this work. Our current focus is on issues such as education, health, crime, social security, manufacturing and immigration. Our online reports on these and other issues are widely sought after and in 2008 nearly 800,000 documents were downloaded. We ensure that there is strong evidence for all our conclusions and present the evidence in a balanced and objective way. Our publications are refereed by at least two independent commentators, who may be academics or experts in their field. In recent years, seminars included Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui on ‘Islam and Liberalism’, Prof Julian Le Grand on ‘NHS reform’, Lord Warner on ‘Patient Choice under the NHS’, Frank Prochaska, Andreas Whittam-Smith and Ferdinand Mount on ‘Churches and Welfare’, David Willets on ‘Choice in education’, Paul Corrigan on ‘Health care reform’, Graeme Catto on ‘Regulation of the medical profession’, Ziauddin Sardar, on ‘The compatibility of Islam and Democracy’, Bernard Ribeiro, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, on ‘NHS funding and social insurance’, Geoff Dench on ‘Poverty in the new East End of London’, Paul Evans, Home Office on ‘Neighbourhood policing’, Frank Field MP on ‘Welfare reform’, John Denham MP on ‘Immigration’, Martin Wolf on the economic crisis, Lord Carlile on terrorism, Maajid Nawaz on Islam and the West, Sir Ken Macdonald on anti-terrorism law, and Irwin Stelzer on the banking crisis.
Her publications include Inspection, Inspection, Inspection, 2006; Second Thoughts on the Family, 2008; and Inspecting the Inspectorate, (ed.), 2008. Selected feature articles from 2009:
Selected feature articles from 2008:
Editorial Director: Robert Whelan Robert Whelan manages the publications programme. Robert Whelan is the Editorial Director of Civitas and was previously the Assistant Director of the IEA Health and Welfare Unit. His publications include Choices in Childbearing, 1992; Broken Homes and Battered Children, 1994, Teaching Sex in Schools, 1995, The Cross and the Rainforest (with Joseph Kirwan and Paul Haffner), 1996; The Corrosion of Charity 1996; Octavia Hill and the Social Housing Debate (ed.) 1998; Wild In Woods: The Myth of the Noble Eco-Savage 1999; Involuntary Action: How Voluntary is the 'Voluntary' Sector? 1999; and Helping the Poor: Friendly Visiting, Dole Charities and Dole Queues, 2001. His edition of Octavia Hill's Letters to Fellow-Workers, 1872-1911, co-edited with Anne Anderson, was published in January 2005. He was director of the Family Education Trust for four years and is managing director of the New Model School Company, an independent organisation founded by Civitas in 2003, which has set up three affordable, independent schools.
Director of the Civitas Criminal Justice Unit (Visiting): Malcolm Davies Professor Malcolm Davies joined Civitas in November 2000 as part-time Director of the Criminal Justice Unit. Professor Davies is also Director of the Criminal Justice Centre based in Ealing Law School at Thames Valley University. He has been a visiting scholar at the Centre for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley (1987/8 and 1990), and at the Law School at UC Davis (1987/8 and 1990); and, a visiting Lecturer on the International Criminal Law Programme in the Department of Criminal Law and Procedures, at the University of Helsinki (1994 and 1996). In 1990 he was awarded a one-year Senior Research Fellowship in the Bureau of Criminal Statistics, in the Attorney General's Office in California. His other international collaborations have been in recent years with National Research Institute of Legal Policy, Helsinki and the Department of Criminology at the University of Oslo. His research interests and academic writings have focused on sentencing theory and policy, the credibility of community sentences, sentencing policy in other jurisdictions, especially California, and European harmonisation of sentencing policy. His latest collaborative project with Finland and Norway involves an analysis of judges' views on sentencing burglars. He has written with Dr Hazel Croall and Jane Tyrer JP a widely used textbook Criminal Justice: An Introduction to the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales, first published by Longmans in 1995; now in its second edition (1998). He is also author of Punishing Criminals: Developing Community-Based Intermediate Sanctions, Greenwood Publications, Connecticut, 1993; and, with J-P Takala and J Tyrer, Penological Esperanto and Sentencing Parochialism: A Comparative Study of Non-Prison Punishments, Dartmouth, Aldershot, 1996. Forthcoming publications include: 'The Criminal Justice System of England and Wales' in The Encyclopaedia of Crime and Justice, Macmillan Reference: New York: and with J-P Takala and J Tyrer, 'Sentencing Burglars in England and Finland', in Sentencing and Society: International Perspectives, eds. N. Hutton and C. Tata, Ashgate: Aldershot. Director of the Civitas Manufacturing Renewal Project (Visiting): Ruth Lea Ruth Lea joined Civitas part-time in late 2008 to head the Manufacturing Renewal Project. Editorial Executive and Membership Manager: Catherine Green Catherine Green is Editorial Executive with responsibility for typesetting and the subscription service. Office Manager: Carol Bristow Carol Bristow joined Civitas in 2010 as Office Manager. Curriculum Project Co-ordinator: Annaliese Briggs Annaliese Briggs joined Civitas in 2009 to work for Civitas Schools and now co-ordinates the Curriculum Project. Yorkshire Co-ordinator, Supplementary schools Project: Michele Ledda Michele Ledda joined Civitas in 2007 to co-ordinate the supplementary schools project in Yorkshire. Communications Manager: Nick Cowen Nick Cowen joined Civitas in 2010 as Communications Manager. Director of the Wealth of Nations Project: David Merlin-Jones David Merlin-Jones joined Civitas in 2010 as a Research Fellow and is now Director of the Wealth of Nations Project. Research Fellow: Stephen Clarke Stephen Clarke joined Civitas in 2010 and now works on the Wealth of Nations Project. Director of the EU Project: Natalie Hamill Natalie Hamill joined Civitas in 2009 to work on the EU Project. Researcher: Lucy Hatton Lucy Hatton joined Civitas in 2011 to work on the EU Project and the Wealth of Nations Project. Civitas Schools Administrator: David Jones David Jones joined Civitas in 2011 to work in Civitas Schools. Sales Administrator: Janet Russell Janet Russell joined Civitas in 2000 to manage book sales and distribution. Senior Research Fellow (Visiting): Professor David Conway David Conway joined Civitas in 2004 to work on health care and multiculturalism. He is now a researcher in the Civitas Social Cohesion Unit. Before joining Civitas he was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Middlesex. His publications include A Farewell to Marx; Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal; Free-Market Feminism; The Rediscovery of Wisdom and In Defence of the Realm: The Place of Nations in Classical Liberalism; A Nation of Immigrants?, 2007; and Liberal Education and the National Curriculum, 2009.
Senior Research Fellow (Visiting): Jon Davies Jon Davies joined Civitas as visiting senior research fellow in 2008. Professorial Research Fellow (Visiting): Peter Saunders Professor Peter Saunders joined Civitas in 2010. His personal website is here. Senior Research Fellow (Visiting): Jonathan Foreman Jonathan Foreman joined Civitas as visiting senior research fellow in 2011 to work on overseas aid and policing. Return to top Official Objects
"To advance the study and understanding of religion and ethics in society and any other charitable purpose." Our main activity is the advancement of education, but some of our work involves the 'advancement of citizenship or community development' and its precursor purposes as discussed in the Charity Commission booklet The Promotion of Community Capacity Building (RR5). Some work also involves the advancement of human rights as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Annual Accounts
Our annual report and audited accounts for 2010 can be found here. (PDF) Trustees
Ivan Bradbury (Chairman) Patrons
Philip Brown Professor Brenda Almond (University of Hull) |
