Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
PROFESSOR SIR
BERNARD CRICK,
MS MIRIAM
ROSEN AND
MR SCOTT
HARRISON
24 OCTOBER 2005
Q20 Mr Wilson: You do not think it
is a substitute?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: When
the report first came out a body called the Institute for Citizenship,
I think, and one of the brothers Dimbleby is President of that,
commissioned a survey and, rather to my surprise, showed that
74% of parents were in favour of citizenship. I freely admit they
probably were thinking of citizenship in terms much more of good
behaviour than of active political participation, whereas in fact
we tried to do both. I believe that the one will lead to the other,
that if kids are doing things, as Scott Harrison has just said,
that interest them and that they find exciting, participative,
have an effect on something, it will help to keep them out of
trouble. I do not in the least see this as interfering with parental
responsibilities.
Q21 Mr Wilson: But do you think if
parents were doing their job properly we would not need citizenship
teaching? Do you think they are completely separate things?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: Forgive
my saying, slightly combatively, that if parents were doing their
job properly we would not need quite a lot of education, but you
see idealised parents of some leading politicians of both parties
and there are the actual parents in the problem areas.
Q22 Mr Wilson: Do you see the approach
to citizenship education broadly in keeping with what you envisaged
originally?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: As
at the beginning, in some schools, excitingly, yes; in others
not. In others it is a bit hard to judge. Some schools are nervous
of it so they stick to the institutional bits and there is still
a bit too much rote learning, and Scott Harrison in his report
can comment more on that. What I would like to say to Scott's
face, if I may, despite my historical nervousness, particularly
when Mr Woodhead was at Ofsted, and he was no fan of citizenship,
that the notes for guidance that were drawn up two years ago for
inspectors on how to inspect citizenship I think are absolutely
excellent. They are well worth reading. They are one of the best
summaries of the aims and intentions that I have read.
Q23 Mr Wilson: So you are saying
there is a patchy take-up?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: Yes.
Q24 Chairman: Rob, let Scott Harrison
come back to you as well.
Mr Harrison: Can we go back first
to the question please? I thought you were going to bring Miriam
in as well.
Q25 Chairman: Miriam?
Ms Rosen: I am happy to let Scott
respond because he has the detail, but it is quite correct. What
we are finding is that certain aspects of the Order are taught
more frequently than others.
Mr Harrison: It is a very ambitious
Order and when you were talking earlier about the training courses,
for example, you can see that there are very many ways into it.
Some take a global dimension, some go in through human rights
and so on. What we are finding is more teaching of what you might
perceive as the central political literacy/government/voting/law
area than, for example, the diversity of the UK, the EU, the Commonwealth,
which are somewhat neglected, I think, because some of them are
perceived to be dull and some of them are particularly sensitive
areas that some teachers go to with great reluctance. I am talking
about, for example, the diversity of the UK, which in the Order
says, the "regional, national, religious, ethnic diversity
of Britain". Some people find that difficult to teach.
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: "Shall
be understood and respected". The word "respect"
is there.
Q26 Mr Wilson: So the answer in essence
that you are giving me is that the situation is patchy. Some schools
are already doing this sort of thing. For example, they are already
encouraging their pupils to go out and volunteer and do these
things, and my fear is that those good schools that were doing
that are the ones that are taking this up enthusiastically, so
there has actually been no net gain. Would you like to comment
on that?
Mr Harrison: Yes, certainly. I
cannot say whether what you are saying is right or wrong but what
I have seen is a lot of schools that started three or four years
ago from nothing in terms of citizenship provision explicitly,
have since put into place curricula and activities which are motivating
and are doing very well indeed. Some of them, for example, saw
citizenship as a way in which they could lever change in the school
more broadly and raise standards, for example, schools with failing
personal development programmes, "All right, let us think
about doing this another way", and embraced that within a
new citizenship provision. Some started from cold and are now
doing very well. Can I just interject for a moment and say that
I apologise that we were invited to table a document and I was
away on an inspection last week and did not table the report on
citizenship which was released with David Bell's annual report
last week, which goes into these situations. In this report we
speak about the need for everybody involved here to learn through
innovation. We were talking earlier about whether there is a historic
provision in schools which can simply be carried forward. What
we are saying is that this is new, and it is not only new to teachers
and head teachers; it is also new to examiners, to inspectors,
to textbook writers, and we learn as we go. I suspect some schools
that did think, in answer to Rob's question, that they were doing
very well, have since that time said, "All right. Let us
take stock of the new National Curriculum and evaluate what we
are doing", and some of them will have gone in a different
direction, but to say there are no gains would be wrong. I think
schools which started with little have now got a lot.
Q27 Mr Marsden: I wonder if I can
move our witnesses on to the issue of the implementation of the
curriculum and the way in which it might develop or go forward.
Sir Bernard, I think you said it was important to realise that
the citizenship initiative had not just come entirely out of David
Blunkett's head. I would entirely agree with you that, in fact,
the citizenship curriculum came alongside and was possibly heavily
influenced by at least a decade of frenzied intellectual and other
debates about the nature of the United Kingdom, the nature of
the citizenship in it and identity, and everything which goes
with it. Also, I think you said that when you had originally looked
at the whole area you thought of the idea of bringing in history
as a natural ally of citizenship in a joint curriculum. Perhaps
you will not be surprised, therefore, that a former editor of
History Today should ask you whether, in fact, you think—particularly
given everything which is going on in terms of the arguments about
identity—it was a mistake not specifically to include some
historical content related to the broader themes in the prescribed
curriculum which has been laid down?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: I
think the Order does talk about the origins of the franchise in
a democratic system and the origins of representative government,
and that was deliberately there to build a link with history.
In fact, still, a lot of the teachers teaching it were history
trained. I am really in two minds on your direct question. One
mind is practical, that we cannot go back, there has been enough
huge curricular change; the other is that if history had remained
in Key Stage 4, it might have been the case for a somewhat more
historically-minded curriculum, but with the danger of overload.
I suppose we really move in the other direction, thinking that
the best learning for democracy would not be involved in the formal
learning of history but would be involved in participative activities
and in schools enlarging the scope of the knowledge of their pupils
about what was going on in the local communities and trying to
get the voluntary bodies into schools and trying to work with
them. That was never there and it was oddly never there in political
studies when I was teaching political studies. Okay, there were
the powers of local government, but nobody talked about the voluntary
sector, "Oh that was sociology or social sciences or social
training for social workers", a sort of deliberate strategy
in the Citizenship Order was to go for a community and participative
approach. Even though—as it was said a moment ago—this
is a very broad curriculum, it was very carefully said in the
QCA's advice that whereas pupils should have knowledge of the
meaning of every term and concept in it, they need not necessarily
cover everything in equal depth. In other words, we were giving
the teachers a lot of scope. I think the history teachers could
find quite a bit of scope in this.
Mr Harrison: I think the challenge
is there for history teachers. If you talk about things like Britishness
and identity and why Britain is what it is today, obviously the
teaching of history has a profound part to play. I am not sure
the challenge has yet been taken up because—as I said in
my past role for Ofsted as a specialist in history—there
are areas like the British Empire which are not taught much. I
am not saying we teach a specific thing about the British Empire,
but there are many histories of different people who are represented
here in Britain today and that needs to be explained. I think
the point about citizenship and history is that history provides
the background, citizenship provides the current relevance of
that and historians could make more of it than they do.
Q28 Mr Marsden: Can I take all three
of you a bit further in this broader direction of how we relate
the relevance of the curriculum to some of the broader social
and political issues which we are discussing at the moment. How
do we, for example, push citizenship education up the school agenda
and improve the quality of it? We heard concerns earlier about
there not being enough history time in the curriculum for that
to be done. Is citizenship just, in fact, an issue for the Department
for Education and Skills? For example, at the moment the Home
Office—perhaps a rather curious process—have the responsibility
for Holocaust Day and all the Holocaust educational work which
goes on goes on primarily out of the Home Office. Are there other
departments in government that ought to be supporting and suggesting
things for the citizenship curriculum?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: I
think there are. After I ceased to be an adviser at the DfES I
got persuaded by the same gentleman to be an adviser for an advisory
group on the integration of immigrants. We based that on the citizenship
curriculum for the ESO teachers of language. That was a Home Office
show, and I discovered, to my surprise, that in the Home Office
there was a division called the "active community division"
and it was elevated into an active community directorate. There
was a lot of paper published about increasing the work of community
groups and even training community activists. I heard Mr Blunkett
use that phrase, apparently the Labour Party troubles of the past
are so long ago that a community activist is now a perfectly neutral
and sensible word, that citizenship training should be offered
to them. There were certain contingent events at that time which
meant, as far as I could see, there was very little funding for
that. It was rather like the Russell Report on volunteering, which
was a marvellous report but I have not heard much of it.
Q29 Mr Marsden: Would you agree it
is important that if there are going to be legitimate interests
in the Citizenship Agenda by different departments of government,
perhaps they need to work together more closely than they are
doing at the moment?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: I
agree very much. I was quite startled that some senior officials
in the Home Office had virtually no knowledge of the Citizenship
Order or that an order—and afterall this is a legal order,
it is part of the National Curriculum—could be drafted in
such broad terms. Whereas the lawyers in the Home Office tend
to think that the Citizenship [naturalisation] Order, for which
the ESOL teachers shall teach, has got to be very, very precise
indeed rather than leaving it to the professionalism and common
sense of the teachers teaching very different people in very different
parts of the country. There is a tremendous cultural difference
between these two departments.
Q30 Chairman: Where is the guidance
which makes it focused and specific for new migrants to this country?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: Sorry?
Q31 Chairman: You were contrasting
the focus on citizenship, which is broad and I understood you
to say this other committee you were on—which was about
naturalisation and immigrants that come to this country who have
knowledge of this country—has some very specific focused
areas which they pay attention to, where is that published?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: The
committee I chaired brought out a report called The Old and
the New. That appeared as a programme of studies in the Stationery
Office publication called Living in the United Kingdom, a Journey
to Citizenship. It was a broad programme of studies, not surprisingly
considering the various people who were concerned. It was rather
like the Citizenship Order, we did not say, "Let us define
Britishness" we said, "What holds us all together is
a common democratic tradition and the practice of free politics".
On Monday week there is a conference at which the Home Office
ministers and civil servants will announce what I believe will
be a very, very narrow version, just some cherry picking, from
this broad account of what immigrants need to know in order to
settle down. The Home Office lawyers seem to take the view that
this is too broad to be statutory, so they have taken one or two
incidents out of that broad programme rather than try to make
the programme of the same status as a Citizenship Order. I give
this as an example.[1]
Now the Department for Constitutional Affairs is fishing in these
waters, I must admit somewhat to my alarm because, after all,
is there a British constitution? Any interpretation of the constitution
is politically contentious and that is absolutely splendid for
teaching citizenship, but it is not so good when government departments
try and lay down what the constitution actually is and promise
to circulate a lot of stuff around schools as if that should be
learned by heart. I have some of the same difficulties with some
human rights organisations who seem to think that you should learn
the 62 articles of the United Nations' Rights of the Child "No,
no, no, no" I had a go at them in a public meeting on that
so they have now cut it down to six but if you learn those six
off by heart you will be a better person, well, I think that is
nonsense.
Q32 Mr Marsden: My understanding is that
the whole of Key Stage 3 in the National Curriculum is currently
being reviewed by the QCA. Given that is the case, would you want
to see some of the things that we have discussed here this afternoon—possibly
the issue of how we link in history more, possibly how we bring
out some of these relationships between the identities of various
communities who come to our country with what citizenship means—as
an opportunity to look again at the content, particularly at Key
Stage 3?
Ms Rosen: Yes, we think the revision
is very important, but I will let Scott go into the detail.
Mr Harrison: Can I link this with
your previous question about what government departments can do?
The reason for doing this is that when I go into schools, less
now than in the past, I hear two things: one is it might go away,
so we need not do anything, and the other one is the expression,
"light touch order" which was around a lot in the early
days of citizenship. I am not sure who originally said it, but
someone said, "This is a light touch order" and schools
say, "If it is light touch, it could be soft touch".
I think in considering a review the status of citizenship needs
to be considered in this context because at the moment it does
not have the same status as other National Curriculum subjects.
For example, with regard to assessment arrangements, just as art,
music, and PE were given a change in status at the last review
it might be worth thinking about doing this for citizenship to
raise it to the same status as other subjects, but also to show
there is still a commitment to this and it is not going to go
away. The second thing on the review is that citizenship has been
approached in a way that schools can do it their way. We have
seen a range of successful ways, and I think now we know what
works and we know what does not work. In the review I hope the
evidence from this can be used to help schools be clearer about
how they are going to get this extra ingredient into their curriculum
in a way that is constructive in their own circumstances. For
some that might go through the humanities route, for others through
a discrete subject route and for others from different routes,
but the main thing is that they all come up with something which
is substantial and worthwhile for the children.
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: I
think it would be paradoxical if citizenship was too tightly defined.
Quite honestly, looking back again and again at the original report
it was light touch in the sense that no one part of it had to
be studied in the depth of existing national curricular parts.
It was the shortest of all the national curricula; it is about
four pages and compared with some of the others it is very short.
It is very broad, but that was deliberately to give teachers the
scope to adapt these broad headings for particular classes and
particular circumstances. I think that is part of the freedom.
This is part of getting people to think for themselves, so God
forbid that a revision of Key Stage 3 should say citizenship needs
defining in 20 or 30 pages as the chemistry or history or geography.
Q33 Chairman: Sir Bernard, it is
nice to be flexible, but it would be strange in a girls' school
not to look at women's rights, for example? That would be odd,
would it not?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: I
am sure they do. It is flexible enough for different things to
be looked at in different schools.
Q34 Mrs Dorries: Obviously the success
of any subject when it is taught in school depends upon the quality
of the teaching. Miriam, you stated that the teaching is now good
in half of the schools, which obviously implies that it is not
good in the other half of the schools. You also said that the
subjects over the last two years have been adapted and altered
to reach that position. Does this not sound as though citizenship
is being taught on the hoof in the schools and is this fair on
the children and the teachers? How long do you think it is going
to be before we reach a point where you can say that citizenship
is being taught well in all of the schools?
Ms Rosen: It is to do with what we were
exploring earlier which is how it is embedded into the curriculum.
In schools where it has not been successfully embedded there is
not sufficient focus on the way it is being taught on the Citizenship
Order and that could be because the school is trying to teach
it across the curriculum or trying to teach it through tutorial
periods, but not successfully and it has not trained the teachers
properly. What we need is more focus and more development. It
may take time; it only started a short time ago and we cannot
expect it to be in the same position as the other subjects which
have had much longer. I do not think we will see overnight success,
but now we have a lot of evidence about what works. We have been
disseminating that in the Annual Report so that schools have got
something to build on. We are seeing an incremental improvement
which we expect to continue. One of the things which perhaps the
QCA revision could do is to try and add a bit of impetus to that
and point more clearly at the ways in which schools could be introducing
it.
Mrs Dorries: You stated that there were
850 teachers now signing up also for special teacher training
which is on. I am not quite sure of the number of schools we have
across the UK, but 850 teachers who are specialised in the subject
does not seem an awful lot to me compared with the number of schools
we have. Again it goes back to the quality of teaching, if the
subject is to be taught, do we not need those teachers trained?
Q35 Chairman: What is the latest
number of schools then, Miriam?
Ms Rosen: Just over 23,000.
Q36 Mrs Dorries: There are 850 specialist
teachers in citizenship. It seems that your ambition over a period
of time with 850 teachers and 23,000 schools is going to take
some considerable time to reach?
Ms Rosen: In the primary sector,
of course, citizenship is to get taught together with PSHE, and
I think one would not necessarily expect there to be teachers
whose background was specifically in citizenship. In secondary
I think that is desirable.
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: It
is about 2,500.
Ms Rosen: That is right, it is
a smaller number of secondary schools. What we are seeing at the
moment is that the teacher training courses we have are oversubscribed.
The teachers who come out of them easily find jobs and often do
very well in their schools, so it does seem that probably there
is scope for a bit more capacity there.
Q37 Mrs Dorries: Sir Bernard, you
said there are 2,500 secondary schools, but they are all quite
large considering the city academies also. The citizenship programme
going into the city academies, is that altered in any way to suit
that particular environment? I read something about the fact that
the FSHE and citizenship and other subjects was one of the things
which was being piloted in the city academies. Have you seen any
definitive teaching methods there which you can use to implement
roll-outs to the other schools?
Ms Rosen: The Order is fairly
broad and to some extent schools can interpret it in their own
way. I do not know the specificity regarding academies; Scott,
do you?
Mr Harrison: I think in the second
session you will be able to hear from one of the schools, not
an academy but one where it has got citizen specialist status,
so I would defer to them to describe what they do. Certainly,
I have been to some schools in inner cities, in disadvantaged
areas, where citizenship has been central to their drive for improvement.
Can I go back on one other thing which you asked, please, and
just to mention the juxtaposition of good teaching and not good
teaching? In our grading there is an intermediate category of
adequate, and the amount of unsatisfactory teaching in citizenship
is only about 10%, which is higher than other subjects but, as
I said, some of these are pressed folk who do not want to be doing
it anyway and it is not surprising to find some of them in that
situation.
Q38 Mrs Dorries: How can you measure
a subject which is so flexible in its content and so it is disseminated
throughout the school? How can you measure whether it is good,
inadequate or poor?
Mr Harrison: What the inspectors
have to do—especially under the new arrangements which we
are working at—is judge teaching by a range of evidence.
It might be from observing lessons, it might be from looking at
the work and inferring something about the quality of teaching
and it might be from talking to children and teachers themselves.
Ultimately, what we are coming to now is a subjective judgment
based on that brought about by our ability to place that in the
context of what we see elsewhere. I cannot say it is a science,
I think it is an art.
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: It
is a professional judgment.
Q39 Dr Blackman-Woods: I want to
carry on from that, returning to teacher training. There has obviously
been a huge growth in the numbers who are taking citizenship as
their main subject in terms of teacher training. Is that rate
of growth going to be able to continue? Is it enough or do we
need another push to get teachers trained?
Professor Sir Bernard Crick: I
think some more are needed, but a much greater need in terms of
resourcing is for continuous professional development. We couched
the Citizenship Order on the gloriously naive notion that most
of the things in it were simple enough for anyone who is already
a citizen of this country to understand. We found great difficulty
in getting across to the teachers how relatively simple the level
of knowledge demanded was, particularly in Key Stage 3. They are
so caught in the paradigm of the university and the A-levels still,
the high conventional standards which Mr Woodhead was talking
about, that they could hardly concede that they themselves were
citizens of Britain voting and occasionally reading newspapers.
Of course people said to me, "Do not be silly, Bernard, teachers
do not have time to read the newspapers", but we were looking
at that level of knowledge, we were not confusing this with political
science or with A-level stuff. Although I think the standards
will rise if a significant number of new trained teachers can
be brought in, I think there are already enough teachers with
the common sense and the professionalism in the schools if they
can be given greater access to professional development short
courses, to achieve the effect which we probably all want.
Mr Harrison: I think Bernard is
a little modest at times. In his report there is a whole section
on teaching controversial issues. I think as time has gone on
we have found that pedagogically, and in terms of the issues which
teachers have to deal with, handling 25 fifteen-year-olds and
whatever else, teaching citizenship is difficult. I agree with
Bernard that we need substantial training for teachers in service
who are signed up to doing this day on day.
1 I am glad to say that on 1 November the Minister's
announcement of the new regulations proved me wrong. The lawyers
were persuaded and the recommendations of the Living in the United
Kingdom advisory group were broadly followed. Back
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