Letter from the Chairman

Classics for All is only five years old but we are on a roll. As we draw to the end of 2015, we have (again) sharply increased the number of schools we’ve supported, from 200 to 300, nationwide. In order to meet the rising demand, we want to double this number over the coming two years.

Our start-up grants go to schools for retraining teachers and paying for their temporary replacements. We look for schools that promise to make classics permanent at the end of the 2-year period of our grant.  Often what they report back is even better than expected.  At Greig City Academy in Haringey 15 year 8 students attend classics once a week; the students were not pre-selected based on ability or assumption about interest; each came forward to join the programme after expressing a motivation for learning about the ancient world. The sessions have been over-subscribed with more wanting to join than the school has had space for. And Sidney Stringer Academy in Coventry achieved outstanding results this September: 9 out of 10 pupils received A* in Latin GCSEs (the 10^th received an A). 

We have just opened up to receive applications from schools for start-up support to introduce classics next year. Applications are coming in from schools across the country.  This rising demand continues to push us to seek higher levels of funding to support it. 

In our Fifth Anniversary year, we reached the milestone of raising £300,000.  Looking ahead to the next five years, we aim to increase this to at least £500,000 per annum. We aim to build a base of 1,000 people giving at least £100 a year - our Centurions -  and a further 100 people - our Praetorians - giving at least £1,000. If you donate £5,000, you'll be made a Senator. It only takes an average grant of £3,000 to get classics into a cluster of schools, re-train half a dozen teachers and reach 100 pupils within two years.

I hope you can help us double the number of schools and children being introduced to classics during the coming year. There’s a rising tide and we need to seize the moment.

  Nicholas Barber CBE

Telling our story: Our director’s guide to the website

I am thrilled to announce our new website is now live.  It gives us a platform to illustrate how we work, our achievements and aspirations, who we fund (featuring a clickable map!), the many people  involved in supporting us and the outcomes of our grants to schools. It offers a number of ways to get involved with Classics for All: how to donate , apply for a grant, attend or help organise a fundraising event and how to volunteer your expertise.  While we wait for next year’s events to take shape, you can visit our events archive  featuring a short film of the mock Trial of Socrates.

For the first time we offer a guide to setting up classics in schools and provide case studies written by teachers that have been using our grants to start up classics. The new site also includes information about regional classics hubs that are beginning to take shape across the UK to help reach more state schools and foster regional classics expansion.

Our home page will change regularly with new stories and announcements. And we are glad to provide a permanent home for the Reading Room, featuring a wide range of concise reviews of books about the ancient world, designed to appeal both to teachers and the interested classical public alike, edited by Alan Beale and Dr Peter Jones and updated weekly.

As Tom Holland, one of our patrons, says: ‘What Pericles claimed Athens was to Greece – an education – Greece and Rome have been to the world. No generation, and certainly no class of school, should be denied it.’ 

You can read more about what each of our patrons has to say in support of classics for state schools and the work of Classics for All.  And you may not need convincing, but for anyone who does, we have peppered the website with rationale for ‘why classics’.

If you haven’t yet donated this year do please consider, as our Chairman suggests, becoming a Centurion for less than £10 per month.  Whatever your level of support, it is very welcome. Your money is being put to excellent use, and provides an ever stronger platform on which to recruit many more donors all the way from Centurions to Olympians. 


Jules Mann

Announcements

We are currently accepting applications from schools with a new two-stage process: stage one is an initial enquiry; successful applicants from that stage will then be invited to submit a full application having been equipped with links to appropriate regional hubs or other local schools that have also expressed an interest in starting up classics.  The deadline is 15 January 2016. Do please spread the word.
 

Call for pro-bono support

Do you have event management, marketing, PR or fundraising expertise and time to dedicate to our charity for the next year? Get in touch through our volunteer page.