ABSTRACT
A much-quoted section of the 1988 Education Act (incorporated in subsequent Acts) asserted that the school curriculum should be one which ‘(a) promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and of society; and (b) prepares such pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life’. Few (if any) schools would imagine that they could fulfil their educational mission if they limited themselves to the delivery of the academic, technical and creative subjects of the national curriculum. The addition of citizenship education as a programme of study at key stages 3 and 4 is one way of ensuring that those in the maintained sector do not.
