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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 failed by the school system 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. PROVIDING PRIMARY EDUCATION FOR ALL There are a number of reasonably priced private schools, but many are too expensive for the majority of people. We aim to provide high quality primary education for all sections of society, regardless of parental income. We achieve this aim with two programmes, the New Model School and our supplementary schools. The New Model School We have established a primary school in London, the New Model School, whose fees are kept as low as economically possible without making a loss. At present the fees are below £5,000 per year, about 40-50% lower than many London-based private schools. For parents unable to afford even modest fees we are building up a bursary fund to provide free and subsidised places. Although it was established by Civitas, the New Model School is not a subsidiary. It is an independent organisation registered as a company whose constitution is based on the ‘philanthropy and five per cent’ model. Shareholders buy shares in blocks of £100 and for each £100 of shares they must make an interest-free loan of £1,000. The maximum dividend payable on the shares is 5%, but no dividend will be paid for the first few years of the project. Civitas has supported the start-up costs of the school, but now that it is economically viable Civitas focuses on widening the access of children from less advantaged backgrounds. Having founded the first school, the aim is to establish others and also to develop a model that can be replicated by other groups elsewhere in country in order to reach as many children as possible. More detail can be found at the New Model School website. Supplementary Schools Many primary schools in inner city areas fail to teach 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. We are currently providing fourteen supplementary schools for over 340 children a week. Most are in London - Bethnal Green, the King’s Cross area (three schools), Hammersmith, Camberwell and Kilburn. Five are in other parts of the country: Yardley Wood in Birmingham, Keighley, Great Yarmouth, and Bradford (two schools). The children also benefit from a two-week summer school and half-term classes. At the 2007 summer school the average reading age of the children increased by one year and nine months. We are actively increasing the number of supplementary schools by enlisting hard-to-reach children, including the children of immigrants, one of the groups most affected by poor quality schools. More detail can be found here. Children who have been excluded from school are often completely failed by the system. As part of a joint project with the London Boxing Academy (LBA), we teach English, maths and information and communications technology (ICT) to teenagers who have been excluded from school. The LBA tries to reach excluded teenagers, who have often been in trouble with the police, by offering boxing and fitness training. Our role is to teach English, maths and ICT for three hours each day. More detail can be found here. Due to the generosity of one of our donors, we also run a dyslexia bursary scheme for children with special learning difficulties. PROVIDING TEACHING MATERIALS AND SPEAKERS 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 about 200 speakers willing to talk to schools, whether in normal lessons or lunchtime or after-school meetings. Talks have been held in 300 schools so far. Some schools have asked for debates involving speakers from both sides and 30 have been held to date. In February 2008 we held a third conference for about 500 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 are being downloaded at the rate of over 2,000 copies per year. They have been welcomed by teachers and over 200 schools have ordered free CDs. 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 2006 over 68,000 factsheets were downloaded. The pamphlet, Does Marriage Matter?, is also in demand with 2,500 downloads in 2006. 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 AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMES 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 and immigration. Our online reports on these and other issues are widely sought after and in 2007 over 600,000 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 the last year or so, seminars included Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui on ‘Islam and Liberalism’, Dr Iftikhar Malik on ‘Islam, Liberty and Modernity’, Prof Julian Le Grand on ‘NHS reform’, Lord Warner on ‘Patient Choice under the NHS’, Phil Collins on ‘The Education Bill and Reform of the education system’, Frank Prochaska, Andreas Whittam-Smith, Ferdinand Mount and Frank Field 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’, and John Denham MP on ‘Immigration’.
His books include Power and Party in an English City, Allen & Unwin, 1980; Mutual Aid or Welfare State, Allen & Unwin, 1984, with L. Cromwell; Working Class Patients and the Medical Establishment, Temple Smith/Gower, 1985; and The New Right: The Counter Revolution in Political, Economic and Social Thought, Wheatsheaf, 1987; Reinventing Civil Society, IEA, 1993; Community Without Politics: A Market Approach to Welfare Reform, IEA, 1996; Benefit Dependency: How Welfare Undermines Independence (1998); An End to Welfare Rights: The Rediscovery of Independence (1999); Delay, Denial and Dilution (1999) (with Laura Casper); and Stakeholder Health Insurance, London: Civitas, 2000; Crime and Civil Society: Can we become a more law-abiding people?, London: Civitas, 2005; We're (Nearly) all Victims Now: how political correctness is undermining our liberal culture, London: Civitas, 2006; and Individualists Who Co-operate: Education and welfare reform befitting a free people, London: Civitas, 2009. He contributed the chapter on 'The Neo-Liberal Perspective' in Blackwell's The Student's Companion to Social Policy (2nd ed, 2003). He writes occasionally for newspapers, including in recent years pieces in the The Sunday Times, The Times, the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Telegraph. He occasionally broadcasts on programmes such as Newsnight, the Moral Maze and the Today programme. He was a member of the Home Secretary's Crime Statistics Review Group, which in 2006 recommended improvements in the collection of the crime figures. Selected feature articles 2007 - 2009:
Archive of feature articles 2001 - 2007 CLICK HERE for articles from 2001 - 2007.
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; Octavia Hill's Letters to Fellow-Workers, 1872-1911, (co-ed. with Anne Anderson), 2005; The Corruption of the Curriculum, (ed.), 2007. Selected feature articles from 2008/09:
Her publications include Inspection, Inspection, Inspection, 2006; Second Thoughts on the Family, 2008; and Inspecting the Inspectorate, (ed.), 2008. Selected feature articles from 2008:
His publications include Just how well are we?, 2007; The NHS: the sick man of Europe?, 2008; and Checking-up on doctors, 2008. Selected feature articles from 2008/09:
Director of Community Studies: Norman Dennis Norman Dennis is author (with Professor A.H. Halsey) of English Ethical Socialism (Clarendon Press, 1988). Civitas is the current publisher of his Families Without Fatherhood (with George Erdos) (1993), Rising Crime and the Dismembered Family (1993) and The Invention of Permanent Poverty (1997). He edited and with Detective Superintendent Ray Mallon contributed two chapters to Zero Tolerance: policing a free society (1997) and contributed 'Beautiful Theories, Brutal Facts: the welfare state and sexual liberation' to Welfare, Work and Poverty (2000), edited by David Smith. He is also well known for his study of a Yorkshire coal-mining town, Coal Is Our Life (with Cliff Slaughter and Fernando Henriques) (Eyre and Spottiswood, 1956), and two studies of bureaucracy and politics as they affected the working-class district of his birth, Millfield, Sunderland, People and Planning (Faber and Faber, 1970), and Public Participation and Planners' Blight (Faber and Faber, 1972). He has been a Sunderland city councillor, and is active in his local Labour party. He has been a Rockefeller Fellow, Ford Fellow, Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto, California, Leverhulme Fellow, and Visiting Fellow at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He lives in Sunderland and is married, with two children and three grandchildren. Director of the Civitas Criminal Justice Unit: 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. Senior Research Fellow: 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; and A Nation of Immigrants?, 2007. Director of the Civitas Manufacturing Renewal Project: Ruth Lea Ruth Lea joined Civitas part-time in late 2008 to head the Manufacturing Renewal Project. Editorial Assistant: Catherine Green Catherine Green is Editorial Assistant with special responsibility for typesetting and the subscription service. Office Manager: Natalie Bowie Natalie Bowie joined Civitas in 2005 as Office Manager. Research Fellow: Pete Quentin Pete Quentin joined Civitas in 2006 to work on European issues. EU Project Manager: Claire Daley Claire Daley joined Civitas in 2007 as a researcher and now manages the EU project. Director of the Supplementary Schools Project: Eleanor Rogerson Eleanor Rogerson joined Civitas in 2006 to manage our supplementary schools. Yorkshire Co-ordinator, Supplementary schools Project: Michele Ledda Michela Ledda joined Civitas in 2007 to co-ordinate the supplementary schools project in Yorkshire. Supplementary schools Project Assistant: Emma Campbell Emma Campbell joined Civitas in 2008 to assist with the supplementary schools project and New Model School. LBA Community Project Co-ordinator: Tom Ogg Tom Ogg joined Civitas in 2007 to teach at the London Boxing Academy Community Project based in Tottenham. In August 2008 he became project co-ordinator. Senior Research Fellow (Honorary): Jon Davies Jon Davies joined Civitas as honorary senior research fellow in 2008 to work on social cohesion. Sales Administrator: Janet Russell Janet Russell joined Civitas in 2000 to manage book sales and distribution. 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 accounts for 2007 can be found here. (PDF)
Trustees
The Honourable Justin Shaw (Chairman)
Patrons
Philip Brown Professor Brenda Almond (University of Hull) |
