Where now for citizenship education?

A reflection on the future for citizenship education is both pertinent and challenging. It is now over a decade since the publication of the highly influential final report of the Advisory Group on Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools (QCA, 1998, hereafter referred to as the Crick Report), which not only led and shaped the introduction of citizenship education in schools, but also provided a blueprint for contemporary understandings of the subject. The Citizenship Order (Education (National Curriculum) (Attainment Target and Programmes of Study in Citizenship) (England) Order 2000), which established statutory programmes of study for Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 to be taught from August 2002, and was supplemented by non-statutory programmes of study for Citizenship and PSHE for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2, ‘followed the reasoning of the Crick Report to a considerable extent’ (Annette, 2005: 329). So too, the revised statutory programmes of study for citizenship education published in 2007 (for teaching from September 2008) were heavily informed by the Crick Report’s delineation of three strands of citizenship education, namely social and moral responsibility, community involvement and political literacy. Whilst there is evidence of clear progress in the teaching of citizenship in schools (as the other chapters in this volume suggest) issues certainly remain for the teaching of citizenship in England. The analysis offered here is challenging because of the complexity and dynamism

of education and educational initiatives in England as well as the changing use of the term ‘citizenship’ in political and policy discourse (see Keating et al., 2009, section 1.4.1) The results of the General Election of May 2010 and the establishment of a coalition government between the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democratic Party under the leadership of David Cameron has brought into sharp focus the question of how a change of government may impact upon the subject in schools. Whilst at the time of writing it is too early to know precisely what the new government’s intentions concerning citizenship education are, there are reasons for both pessimism and optimism. On the one hand the coalition government has not explicitly committed its support for maintaining the statutory requirements for citizenship education (something which had caused much concern for the subject

association for citizenship – the Association of Citizenship Teaching) and appears committed to reform of the National Curriculum in favour of the core curriculum subjects as well as a strengthening of the place of History. On the other hand, the aims of citizenship education are clearly commensurable with two key policy intentions of the coalition government – the Big Society and the National Citizen Service – and whilst key figures have not fully committed their support to the subject, there has been no explicit statement of intention to remove it from or radically change its place in the curriculum. So what next for citizenship education? Before considering the question of where now for citizenship education, it is

worthwhile briefly setting out a baseline. The 2009 report of the National Foundation for Educational Research’s Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study (Keating et al., 2009: 1) provides a detailed analysis of provision in England based around the central research question ‘How far has citizenship education become embedded in schools in England since 2002, and what does the future hold?’ In considering contrasting data between 2002 and 2009, the report makes a number of positive statements. Such positives include the allocation of more discrete curriculum time for citizenship, increasing evidence of a more strategic approach to integrating citizenship education within and beyond the curriculum, improved links between citizenship and wider school activities and initiatives, and greater levels of, and opportunities for, student participation and pupil voice (Keating et al., 2009: 10, 21, 36, 48). Similarly, the most recent Ofsted (2010: 5) subject report for citizenship education also presents a number of positive developments. Most fundamentally, its first key finding is that ‘[T]here is evidence that provision and outcomes for students are improving overall. Progress in establishing citizenship securely in the curriculum has been steady. Even in the schools where provision was weak, there was mostly an encouraging direction of travel’. However, evidence also suggests that, aside from an uncertain policy context, serious challenges remain for citizenship education in schools in terms of conceptual definitions, curriculum construction, and pedagogy. Notably, as Keating et al. (2009: 10, 21, 36, 48) make clear, where citizenship education is less established such learning is not always explicit for pupils, is characterised by less active forms of learning, may have low status, and has little discrete curriculum time. Moreover, there is consistent evidence that the teaching of citizenship and its place within a school’s curriculum, culture and community is likely to be of higher quality where there are specialist teachers and a committed senior management team, and of less quality where these are not in place (cf. Faulks, 2006). It goes beyond the scope of this chapter to consider more than a few responses

to the question ‘Where now for citizenship education?’ The content here is for this reason selective. The chapter focuses primarily, though not exclusively, on the context of citizenship education in secondary schools in England, and has started by briefly considering the current context of this. It now proceeds to discuss two issues – aims and purpose, and the nature of active citizenship – which are essential foci if citizenship education is to further cement and develop its place in the curriculum of schools.