UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 581-iii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

education and skills committee

 

 

citizenship education

 

 

Monday 15 May 2006

MS JESSICA GOLD, MS RAJI HUNJAN, MR TOM WYLIE and MR JULES MASON

Evidence heard in Public Questions 195 - 263

 

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Education and Skills Committee

on Monday 15 May 2006

Members present

Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair

Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods

Mr Douglas Carswell

Helen Jones

Mr Gordon Marsden

Stephen Williams

________________

Memoranda submitted by School Councils UK, Carnegie Young People Initiative

and the National Youth Agency

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Ms Jessica Gold, Director, School Councils UK; Ms Raji Hunjan, Carnegie Young People Initiative; Mr Tom Wylie, Chief Executive, National Youth Agency; and Mr Jules Mason, Head of Citizenship and Development, British Youth Council; gave evidence.

Q195 Chairman: Can I welcome our witnesses today: Tom Wylie, Jessica Gold, Raji Hunjan and Jules Mason. We are grateful when witnesses give of their valuable time to come before the Committee. We are, I guess, something like mid-way through our look at citizenship and we did have a little break, where we started it and then suspended it while we got on with looking at the Education White Paper, but now we are back on track. It is an interesting time to talk about citizenship; certainly all of us were rather surprised by some of the announcements today. Can we start by asking you, in a nutshell, if you want to not repeat your CV but just to say where you are coming from on this whole citizenship issue? To start from the left, can I ask you, Tom, to open up?

Mr Wylie: I have a background as one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools for 17 years. Now I am the Chief Executive of the National Youth Agency, which is a developmental body, concerned primarily with what happens to young people outside from institutions, so my take on the citizenship question is primarily about that interface between the school and what it is doing and the world, and what is going on in the world of young people to promote their citizenship.

Q196 Chairman: Are you happy about the way things are developing in that relation, in terms of the last three years?

Mr Wylie: We are broadly happy. The starting-point is that young people spend only nine minutes of every waking hour in school, so the question is what happens in the other 51 minutes, and I would urge the Committee to concern itself with the 51 minutes, what is going on in the democratic process, the engagement by councils in ensuring that young people have scope for having a voice or an influence, in service, and so on. You may know that the most recent assessment of their performance, the IPA study, said: "Opportunities for young people to participate in decision-making, policy development and democratic processes were developing well in 84 authorities, that were judged as areas for improvement in 40." I think that is probably about right: two-thirds of places are doing reasonably well; about a third not making much of an effort.

Q197 Chairman: Right. Jessica?

Ms Gold: I first got involved in this field as chairperson of my school council. I had to fight with the boys in my year for the role, when I was in my sixth form, and I won; they did not like me for that. At the time, obviously pre-citizenship, we had a head who was very keen and really believed in the student voice. A few years later I had an opportunity to co‑found School Councils UK and I thought there was some good potential in that idea. I guess School Councils UK started hitting the educational world at the end of the 1990s, gradually building up resources, very much an 'on the ground' organisation, always working with schools, earning about 75 per cent of our annual income by our regular contact with schools and the resources we sell and the training we sell to schools. We have always been very tied in with what schools need and what they are looking for and how they want to be supported. Our general assessment of where things are at is that, in the light of how many books we sell to schools, as clearly teachers want help with school councils and participation, we have sold something like over 12,000 of our primary school councils' tool-kit and over 5,000 copies of our secondary school councils' tool-kit. Teachers are very keen and they do not know how to give students a voice effectively and we want to help them.

Q198 Chairman: Thank you for that. Raji?

Ms Hunjan: My background is that I am a teacher by trade. I have produced a number of formal resources about political literacy, mainly when I was at the Hansard Society and also on behalf of the Parliamentary Education Unit. Now I work for the Carnegie UK Trust on the Young People Initiative programme and our interest is primarily in promoting young people's active involvement in decision-making. We have funded a number of projects in that area and we have commissioned in that area as well. Our interest is in the formal and informal sectors and we are looking quite actively at how to combine the two sectors and encourage more informal participation in schools. We broadly support the citizenship education curriculum. We are concerned that a number of schools have tackled it in the same way they have tackled other subjects, students behind desks, learning facts and knowledge, which is an important part of the citizenship curriculum, but our concern is that what we do not want is very, very knowledgeable young people who then are not invited to participate in formal decision-making processes. Those young people would be more dangerous, I think, than young people who know nothing and therefore will not know that they could participate, but those young people who have knowledge and understanding of democracy would then like to exercise their rights as citizens. That is where we are coming from.

Q199 Chairman: Thank you for that. Jules Mason?

Mr Mason: I work for the British Youth Council, which is the national Youth Council serving people under 26 in the UK and we are a representative body of local national youth groups, ranging from faith organisations to traditional wings of youth organisations, like the Scouts, etc. In terms of my own personal background, I am a representative governor at a school in north London, Fortismere, and a former trustee of the British Youth Council, because all our trustees are aged 18 to 25. In relation to citizenship education, there are three clear things about which the BYC is concerned. One is seeing citizenship education as a move to facilitate real student participation, which includes a stronger student voice, resulting in citizenship running throughout the school and its ethos, rather than just being relative to one specific subject. The need for citizenship education to go beyond the classroom or the actual physical building of a school; which feeds into the last point about it being a key plank in transforming schools into extended schools, enabling schools to have a wider connection and relationship with their community and enabling pupils to have a wider connection with the community base on their local doorstep but also the wider community.

Q200 Chairman: Jules, I think you left out a very vital piece of information, that part of your education was in Huddersfield; which was also the home of James Mason, as well as Jules Mason?

Mr Mason: Yes; and of Mr Wilson.

Q201 Chairman: When we get the chance to mention local links, we do enjoy that. Let us get on to the main business then. Tom Wylie was saying that in two-thirds of schools he thought that progress on citizenship was fair, certainly it was satisfactory, if not that word, and a third not. Raji, you are nodding as I say that. Does that chime with your experience?

Ms Hunjan: Yes, I think so. Most of the schools that we speak to and engage with are fully committed to citizenship education, in principle, and really supportive a voice and recognise that it has importance for doing citizenship education and beyond, and that is really important. The issue is where it comes in the list of priorities within that school. There are so many other issues which take precedence, mainly academic achievement and academic success because that is how many schools feel that they are being judged. As Jessica said, and I second this, for a lot of schools they do not know where to begin and how to start this process. What we are finding often happens is they will go down a route which was not suitable for that school and not do very well and then start to feel a bit disappointed and unclear as to where to go next and so citizenship education falls even further down the list of priorities. I think the fact that Ofsted has given it a much more enthusiastic, positive report in its Annual Report this year hopefully will start to inspire more schools to try out different ways of planning their citizenship education curriculum.

Q202 Chairman: Jessica, some of the evidence would suggest that school councils are more lively and more commonplace in Scotland and Wales than in England. Is that your understanding, or have we got that wrong?

Ms Gold: It is interesting. In terms of Wales, I have a little bit of a thing about Wales, basically they are making school councils statutory, but they have actually not invested anything to support their schools with establishing good school councils. To be honest, I have not been impressed with how they have not reached out to us, as an organisation, at all in the process of their school councils coming in. Every school council will have had to have its first meeting by November of this year, so that is where they are in terms of statutory. I think schools in this country are actually a lot more ahead, and the evidence that we have is that schools are a lot more ahead. When I talk about 'ahead' what I am interested in is schools having a mature student voice. When I talk about a 'mature student voice' it is about a student voice which actually is embedded in the school, it is student voice structures where the students are able to not just go, "Oh, that's rubbish," or "This teacher is..." whatever, but actually are in a situation where they can be critical but also offer constructive suggestions and solutions to things, because that is what a mature student voice is. That happens only over time, as relationships build between teachers and students, and as students' self-perception and confidence grows, and as teachers' trust in students grows as well. In terms of a mature student voice, I think England actually is a lot further ahead; we have a school council network, it has been going for only about two years and we have got about 1,800 members of the network, as in 1,800 schools have signed up and paid to become a member of the network. The number of schools and the case studies, because a lot of them fill in a case study on our case studies database, where students have started becoming engaged in teaching and learning issues and behaviour issues, beyond the toilets, beyond food, beyond your standard uniform kind of school council type issues, happens much more in England than it does in Wales, those kinds of broader-based school policy issues, it is happening much more here. I think that is because, on some level, DfES have supported School Councils UK and therefore we have been in a position, we feel, to support schools with resources, to which they have taken very kindly. No, I do not think that school councils are better in Wales, I do not think there is any evidence of that at all, although it will be interesting, in a year or two's time, to see whether that changes. In effect, school councils are almost statutory here, inasmuch as Ofsted has to look for participation. Ofsted is meant to send a letter to the school council after they have done an inspection; so schools clearly are being very strongly encouraged to have school councils here. In terms of Scotland, that is an interesting question. I have got a meeting in August with the Scottish Children's Commissioner and two representatives of teachers' unions, as one of School Councils UK's strategies is to build relationships with the teaching unions because we want them to buy into effective school councils. I am not fully au fait with the whole scene in Scotland. I think possibly they are a little bit further down the line in some ways than Wales, but I think they have probably still got quite a long way to go.

Mr Mason: Taking on board some of Jessica's points about work with the Welsh Assembly, because that is starting in September, I will read out the relevant section of the Scotland Schools Act from 2000, which said it places a duty on local education authorities to have due regard, so far as reasonably practical, to the views of those who wish to express them, of the child or young person, in decisions that significantly affect that child or young person, taking account of the child's age and maturity. It is more fixed around consultation rather than just general participation. I think the fact that both Scotland and Wales have some statutory duty is something that England should look to follow, along with organisations like ESSA, the English Secondary Students Association, and CRAE, the Children's Rights Alliance for England, they are calling for statutory provision for pupils' involvement and voice within the Education Bill. Also, as an organisation, we believe that young people should be involved in decisions which affect and concern them. With those nine minutes of every hour that they spend in school, they still have that right to have a say on the decisions not just about having a student council, whereby they can be asked a couple of questions, but where actually the school has a mechanism where they ask the pupils, whether it is about catering, the uniform, the school logo or the school ethos. That is for the student participation and voice, rather than just limiting it to saying, "We've got a student council, thereby we're firmly involved and we're listening to our pupils and we're giving them active citizenship."

Q203 Chairman: What is your view on the statement by Bill Rammell, the Minister, this morning, about core British values? If everything is going so well, in terms of citizenship education, and it is only in its infancy, over the past three years of development, why does the Government suddenly have to come out with thinking about core British values taught as part of the curriculum: why is that?

Mr Mason: I have a slight concern with it being about core British values, because they are values which are core about humanity rather than actually defining it to Britain and my understanding is it would be because education is devolved down to the core only in English schools. You asked the question; are you talking about English values or British values, because it is not necessarily going to be taught in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland? I think you run the risk equally of bringing back age-old issues around imperialism and slavery if you focus on Britishness rather than on human rights and treating people as equals. If we live in a truly multicultural society it does not really matter if you are British or you come across because your parents or yourself come from the Asia sub-continent or southern Africa or South America, it is about the values which are core amongst humans rather than because they belong to this specific island, because we live in a global community.

Mr Wylie: I think maybe it shows perhaps recognition of the limits of the taught curriculum. If youngsters are there for only a certain period of time, there must be a limit to what they can be taught about human rights or British identity, or whatever. I would like to pose for the Committee to reflect on, how do you become a democrat, how do you learn to take responsibility for other people in the community, how do you learn to exercise financial responsibility properly? I would want therefore to suggest that there is a set of experiences learning and that maybe the school can go only so far in making those possible, which is why some of us would urge as much attention to what happens in other parts in young people's lives, and there are some good models about how young people have been helped in those arenas. It is not to say that there should be no attention paid to the teaching of values. I used to be a history teacher myself, indeed in a school well known to Dr Blackman-Woods, so I do understand that there are things which can be taught about the constitution, about the political process, but I do not think we can push that to the extreme; what people learn as distinct from what they are being taught.

Q204 Chairman: Are we not putting too much emphasis on schools; is this natural, because the kind of social anthropology that I learned at university was that it is a range of social institutions which deliver core values of the society and that education is only one of those? The others, are they not, are families, the work environment, the trade unions, religious faith groups? It seems to me that we are putting all the emphasis today on the education system delivering core values, or citizenship values, rather than leaving it to a whole range of different social institutions. Am I right in that, or am I wrong?

Mr Wylie: I think you are right. I would quibble just ever so slightly about "leaving it to". I think some of those institutions have decayed a bit in their role of caring for the young. One of your colleagues, Frank Field, has written rather eloquently about the decline of some of those institutions in working-class communities. We need to find ways of re‑establishing those habits of the heart, which were in communities and where young people learned how to be democrats, like how to take responsibility for others, like how to cherish their community and not just damage it. Of course, there is a place for the school, and the FE college, I would say, but it is not the only place I am aware of; but I would not leave it just to them, I think they need encouragement to do those things, they need support to do those things.

Q205 Chairman: Jessica, did you scoff at that?

Ms Gold: One of the things that we feel very strongly, as an organisation, talking about democratic values and core values, is really starting very young, and actually we have just published a Key Stage One school council and participation service. Tom saying a sixth of their working time is in school, which, okay, nine minutes, a sixth sounds a bit more, but a sixth is actually quite a lot of time, actually what we feel is that experiential learning is more powerful than being taught things. I brought this along (How Do Class Councils Work?). Class councils are a really important part of citizenship and democracy and learning about how to have a voice and learning to be more confident, learning to improve schools. From the age of five, if children every year are electing their representatives, so that electing a representative becomes as natural as breathing, becomes as natural as going to the loo, it is just part of life from the age of five, then it is through the experience and learning democracy but then that process of discussing and having to listen and having to compromise and learning to problem-solve. That is the most important learning opportunity, and if it is not being maximised at school, I came from a youth work background and hugely see the value of it. We do have most young people in school from a very young age, and by enabling minor adaptations to the curriculum you can set up structures which give these experiences to young people and they learn how to take part in their own immediate community and how to make it better.

Ms Hunjan: I was quite interested to know what it was the Government wants schools to do more of and why they want them to do more of it. Those core values, which are so important to our society but are important to other countries too - rights, democracy, responsibility, fairness, diversity - schools are already doing those things. The quality can be questioned but we have a citizenship curriculum that is supposed to be encouraging most things, so it seems strange to me that the Government was calling for schools to do something different from what they were already trying to do. Secondly, why do we want schools to do this; is it to stop terrorism, is it to stop racism? Is teaching young people core values going to stop them becoming terrorists, if they were going to become one anyway; is it going to stop them being racist? For me, I think it is about encouraging young people to see themselves as active citizens and active agents of change and not just young people or yobs or consumers or people who listen to Take That - they do not listen to Take That any more, do they - or whatever it is that they listen to; the pop end of it.

Chairman: You were sounding like a High Court Judge there.

Mr Marsden: "Who are these people?"

Q206 Chairman: Sorry; carry on. We know what you mean.

Ms Hunjan: I think, to me, it is about helping those young people to see themselves as active citizens, and to do that it is about seeing them as being able to deal with social inequality and tackle issues of social deprivation and work towards those kinds of common goals and give themselves a sense of community. It is then more experiential learning, which I completely agree with, it is about ensuring that the views of young people can positively feed into decision-making. I think that the Government would be better off supporting that and supporting young people to understand their rights and responsibilities as active citizens, rather than forcing them to think about issues of Britishness, which conflicts with other ways in which they might see themselves.

Chairman: Let us draw down with that a little.

Q207 Mr Marsden: I would like to come to you, Tom, first of all, because we have had a very interesting range of views there. I detected a slight degree of queasiness from some of the speakers about the idea of there being any teaching aspects certainly of some of the core value issues. You have talked about your concerns about the lack of linkage between citizenship in schools and citizenship outside schools; the fact that citizenship itself, the way it is taught in schools, has not been very clearly defined, the fact that it has not had a compulsory status, has that contributed? That woolliness, if you like, where sometimes it has got just shoved by some schools in with a PCH type situation, has that not helped? Would it help more, as the Nuffield Foundation has argued in evidence to us, if actually we did define the school content, I am not saying that the other aspects of things are not important, if we actually did define the school content a little more clearly?

Mr Wylie: Yes. I do feel a little uneasy about the state going too far into definition of some of these fundamental issues; it is why maybe Kenneth Clarke resisted history being taught up to too recent a time. I am for having a framework. I think the state could do more, the Government could do more to lay out a framework and to encourage attention to those things. In that framework for me though would be "What can you help your pupils to experience in this school; what responsibility can you give to them?" as well as the much more straightforward, and frankly boring, bits of how you move from having a bill into being an act, etc. As I think you will find with the Literacy Strategy, really good teachers do not need it; really good teachers will be lively teachers of citizenship. Probably we do not have to worry about the lively teacher, we have to worry about maybe the school which is a bit uncertain where to go, and I can see the point of frameworks in that context, but cautiously so.

Q208 Mr Marsden: If I can come to you Raji, is there not a broader issue, in fact, about the very worrying lack of participation by young people in our democratic institutions; the voting process is only a very, very small part of that, but that is indicative? Is that not, according to much of the research, also related to a fundamental and stunning lack of knowledge about some of the basics of the way in which we work? With respect to Tom, it is not just a question of sitting there and knowing what the difference is between a second reading and an Act of Parliament, it is basic things, like what does a local council do, how does the law work and even "Where do I go to vote; how do I go and vote?" Are these not key, important things? I agree that you are right about school councils and experiential learning, but do not students also need just to be given, in a very palatable form, some of the basic facts?

Ms Hunjan: I think, first of all, just to answer the participation question, there is a lot of evidence which suggests that young people are participating, but they are participating, I think, in the things that organisations, governments, big campaigns encourage them to do, which is fundraising and sponsorships, and all those things, and volunteering, and those things are really important, it is somehow linking that to the more active element of it. I am sure other people who have given you evidence have talked about citizenship and of the three Cs, so citizenship through the curriculum, citizenship through the culture of the school and citizenship through the community. If we take each of those in turn, citizenship through the taught curriculum, I think you are absolutely right that for young people it is really difficult to understand the facts about Parliament and local government and how these things work, and it becomes easier for organisations like us to say, "Okay, well let's do it through experiential learning," because it is hard to know where to go for that kind of support in teaching these facts. Certainly the Parliament website is not helping teachers to be able to pick out information.

Q209 Mr Marsden: Can I stop you there: why? Can you give a couple of examples, because this is a very practical thing that we could feed back; why is it not doing the job it is supposed to do?

Ms Hunjan: I think, for teachers, certainly when I was a teacher and I know from other teachers I have spoken to, it is looking at things through issues. You can encourage young people to get involved in politics, understanding how politics really works, through issues and yet the information that we are presented with on the Parliament website is through select committees and it is really, really difficult to get to the bottom of what the select committees actually provide.

Q210 Mr Marsden: What you are saying is that they are giving a rather dry and formulaic presentation of how Parliament works without saying why it matters that they have got a select committee on education, or environment, or whatever?

Ms Hunjan: Exactly, and for teachers to be able to do that they have to spend time interpreting this information, which is why websites like the BBC Newsround website does so well, because a lot of that interpretation has already been done through its editing, somebody has given it a forum against some balanced view and explained what different political parties think and what different politicians are saying. That is a much more valuable and exciting resource for schools to use. I was actually on the Puttnam Commission which was set up by the Hansard Society and we called for the Parliamentary Education Unit to have a much bigger capacity and a much bigger budget to be able to do some of this work, some of this interpretation, and developing schemes of work, some practical resources for schools, which do not talk just about the facts but talk about the facts through issues, which is a much more exciting way of teaching children and young people. I think there is a knowledge problem and I think that more needs to be done; everyone can be helping with this, BBC Parliament could help with this. We have got an interactive red button, it needs to be explaining more about processes, and that is really important. The other thing is culture, and obviously Jessica knows a lot more about this because she has talked quite a lot already about school councils, and that is about children and young people being really heavily involved in changing things that are happening in the schools. One example I can give you is that we have got a series of case studies which we pulled together, and a school in South Tyneside called St Joseph's have got a school council which is actually committed to involving the whole school, and they have got a number of really supportive teachers who are committed to helping that school council involve the whole school. They did things such as encourage the school council to become researchers and gather in evidence, as young people, from other young people about what is happening in the schools, and one of the things that they were able to change in this way was the homework policy. They did this really extensive survey in the school of the homework policy and they interviewed young people and teachers and they were able to discover, unpick just how much homework, an unrealistic amount of homework, young people were being given and they were able to present this back to the school and the school was willing to use this evidence to change its homework policy. What you have got there is not just young people involved in decision-making but young people and adults working together to improve the school through a specific issue in which both young people and teachers in this instance were interested.

Q211 Mr Marsden: To move on to you, Jules, and ask you again a little bit about what the linkage should be between the formal teaching of citizenship in schools and what is going on outside schools; what involvement have you had, in the British Youth Council, with trying to develop that linkage?

Mr Mason: We have some school councils in our membership. Just going back to Tom's point, in answering, to a question about the onus being not just on schools but, as I said earlier, about using citizenship education to connect with the wider community, in my own school, Fortismere, where I am a governor, those pupils who are doing citizenship this year for their coursework have been given an option to choose an issue which is of concern to them either locally or nationally, so that, going back to Raji's issue, they focus on something which actually means something to them. They are given pointers and directions to organisations in either Muswell Hill or north London, or national agencies which are concerned with those issues, so that they can make those links. It is not just saying it is all about what you are taught in that one-hour lesson, it is about saying outside of school, "If you're concerned about the environment, if you're concerned about the war in Iraq, you can do thinking in school about it but also outside the school there are other agencies to learn from."

Q212 Mr Marsden: Do you see the British Youth Council's role in that respect as being a sort of information link between local initiatives and what is going on in a local set of schools?

Mr Mason: Yes. We promote regularly, to youth organisations and young people in our network, external opportunities and also on our website put links to different issues and interests, i.e. the organisations, where young people can participate, rather than just limiting it to either "Well, it's young people so they should get involved in education," or "This is a specific youth issue." Young people are interested in other things rather than those which are seen traditionally as being of direct interest to them.

Q213 Mr Marsden: Can I take you back just for a moment to your previous remarks, when the Chairman touched on the issue of Bill Rammell's comments today and core values. Why are you so defensive, or apparently concerned, about Britishness being an issue as a core value being taught in schools? You are the British Youth Council, for goodness sake?

Mr Mason: Equally, our name actually within our membership sometimes raises a lot of debate as to whether or not we should call ourselves British. Whilst we represent and have a membership from all the nations, a number of young people, individuals within our member organisations, sometimes query whether or not you can actually truly be British or are you, first and foremost, more English or Scottish or Welsh or Northern Irish. The debate around the term 'Britishness' is there.

Q214 Mr Marsden: In the context of your name, the British Youth Council, it is a technical description. I speak with a little bit of knowledge because I am a former member of the British Youth Council, I was on the Executive years and years ago. You represent, as you rightly said, a real Smorgasbord of organisations, faith organisations, student political organisations, local councils, and all the rest of it. That is a technical description, is it not?

Mr Mason: For the individual pupil in a school, if you are having lessons which teach you about core British values, it is something telling that young person "You are British." Someone else is defining "We're learning these values, in this framework, because you have to fit into that;" and depending on your background you, the individual pupil, may not see yourself, first and foremost, as being British.

Q215 Mr Marsden: I would not sound as insistent as that. That is jumping the gun a little bit. We do not know, for example, or I certainly do not know, what the Government's thoughts are in terms of core values. Is there not a difference between someone standing up and saying "These are the core British values which are very important to us for cohesiveness in a multi-faith, multi-ethnic society," and a class where you have a discussion of are there core British values, are they, in fact, universal values, and how do the particular experiences of Britain inform that process?

Mr Mason: I would rather a debate were officially about whether these values, going back to what I said before, are about humanity, rather than saying are these specific values applicable only to those who count themselves as being British and thereby that would partly imply that. The same set of values goes across humanity, regardless of your status, and soon will only be refined because XYZ means you are British, XYZ ABC means you are a broader member of the human race, rather than limit it down.

Q216 Helen Jones: Do you not think it is important that young people born or brought up in this country, whatever their ethnic background, define themselves as British, however we may choose to structure that? As someone who is half Welsh, half Irish and born in England, and Wales is in this country, it is in the United Kingdom, I am never sure how we define it, but surely a debate on how you define that and getting people to understand that, whatever their ethnic background, if they were born here and they live here they are British is a valuable thing, and you seem to see it as something that is not valuable?

Mr Mason: I am not saying it is not valuable. My concern is coming down the route whereby you have imposed from on high "This is a set of values and if you don't agree with them you're not British; if you do agree with them you're British." It goes back partly to one of the things Tom was talking about, the whole way the curriculum itself could be set, how we are saying those good teachers do not necessarily need a Britishness strategy, it is those who are good with it. The same would apply with the values aspect of someone imposing down, say, very prescriptively, "These are the things which make you British, and if you don't buy into that then you are not British."

Q217 Helen Jones: I am not sure that we were saying that. When you talk about those values and defining that, I remember something that my Irish grandfather used to say, when people argued with that, he said "You chose to live here." Therefore, there are values which, as a community, we have to abide by.

Mr Mason: Do you have to live here to be British?

Q218 Helen Jones: Certainly you are not British if you do not live here, are you?

Mr Mason: You can be; you can be resident overseas.

Ms Hunjan: People used to say to my mum and dad "Well, you live here; live by the rules." It was always said in a negative way, as far as I can remember. I second everything that Jules was saying and I think this is a really complex issue, to know what distinctly British core values are as opposed to wider human core values. That is a very difficult thing for schools to tackle, in the same way that it is very difficult for all of us to tackle; it is certainly not a conversation I like to have in the pub, I can tell you. My concern today is why the Government is calling for schools to talk about Britishness; what it is reacting to is what is concerning me. This seems to be coming out of the whole review of the July 7 bombings and our concern about alienation of groups of young Muslim men. If that is why they want us to talk more about Britishness, we have to think about whether that is the right solution to that problem. I think that is my concern with the fact that it has been brought up today. It is not a refusal to discuss what Britishness is.

Q219 Chairman: Is there not an element of political correctness coming out here, in the sense that I think all of us understand where you and Jules are coming from on this, but, in a sense, it is easy to evade the difficult questions, is it not? Some of the most difficult questions that I have discussed with young people in my constituency are when you say, "Okay; let's talk about core values," and international world values do not jump out and you have to look at societies that celebrate good values and the good values that you find in one society perhaps are not shared by people in another society. When it gets really difficult, you start saying, "Well, what are the core values of people who come here in terms of their attitude to women and the rights of women and the rights of women to get a full education and to be totally emancipated?" Sometimes I would find that perhaps one of the most difficult areas to discuss because you could say that many of us in this country believe in equality of women.

Ms Hunjan: Not everybody; look at the Sun. Not everyone would agree on the equality of women; look at page three in the Sun. That is a universal issue.

Q220 Chairman: I have not seen it expressed anywhere in this country, at least not by anyone I have any respect for, that women should not have equal education opportunities to those of men. Do you think it is acceptable not to have that value?

Ms Hunjan: No. I think that discussion needs to be had but not necessarily in relation to what is Britishness. To have that discussion in relation to what is Britishness is assuming that everyone in Britain agrees that women have got equal rights, and actually there are some people, I would argue, who do not think that women have equal rights. If you look at statistics on domestic violence in this country, if you look at the number of women who are not in senior posts in this country; those issues are there.

Q221 Chairman: That is a criticism of what happens, not a question of what values are British, is it?

Ms Hunjan: Not values, no.

Ms Gold: The whole issue is obviously quite a complex one, this thing about British values, and clearly what the Government is trying to do is develop some kind of cohesive identity for the nation and some sense of shared values. I suppose Raji's point was, look at the people you are trying to reach and if you are trying to say "Hey, mate, you've got British values and you're one of us," it will not work necessarily, which is probably what the Government is trying to do, develop this cohesiveness. The reality is that we have got all sorts of historical issues, have we not, about being a nation which has conquered other nations, etc. I am not against the idea. I just do not believe you can impose values on people. I suppose having lively debates in schools about what values are is really helpful and good, but we come back to the initial citizenship argument, which was, again, you cannot make someone a good citizen by telling them what a good citizen is. It is getting young people engaged in the process and getting them to challenge each other and actually say "What is acceptable behaviour in our school?" We have got a London Secondary School Councils Action Research Project going on at the moment, it is a three-year, funded project, working in eight secondary schools, looking at what happens if you work and invest properly in participation over an extended period, what impact it has on attitudes, how happy people are in school, young people's participation, and they are being very innovative. One of the things that one of the schools is doing is developing a behaviour panel of young people. They were elected and lots of students wanted to be on it, and it was a mixture of students, not just the goody-goodies, because the school council, which in the end appointed this behaviour panel, wanted it to be a really mixed group of students in terms of their historical behaviour. It has ended up with young people helping to set the tone as to what is acceptable in school and what is not, so the behaviour panel, to some extent, has been able to give out punishments, it has been given some trust by the headteacher; also, interestingly, teachers have now started saying to the behaviour panel, "Can you come and speak to my class; they're acting up." There was one particular Year 11 class, which was very bright but also not behaving very well, which invited students on the behaviour panel to come in and talk to their peers, and therefore challenge their peers as to what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. It was regarded as successful, so it has happened again where these students have been called in to talk to and discuss issues with their peers. I do not think the Government is going to get anywhere really with trying to impose values, although give it a try, but how do you get people engaged in defining values and sharing values. The reality is, in most societies, it is the destructive minority which becomes vocal and sets the tone, so how do you create structures within communities, let us face it, schools are young people's communities, how do you create structures where you can get the majority, who tend to be silent, to set the tone and to set the atmosphere as to what is acceptable. It is only by setting effective, participative student infrastructures, which is what we promote, can you get that silent majority setting the tone as to what is acceptable.

Q222 Mr Marsden: Can I just conclude this. I think it has been a fascinating discussion but, you are right, what we are coming back to all the time is how you define citizenship education. What we are talking about is something which appears to be very free-flow and, of course, you may believe that we do not have to define it. If we do have to define it, whose job is it, ultimately, to define, and I am not saying there is one particular body or group of people, but who should be in there defining citizenship education?

Mr Wylie: There is a range of people who are involved in making decisions about the nature of the curriculum and at the great policy level, in the end, it is the Government of the day. I am just urging a certain caution about how a Government would do that, and what stakeholders, in the happy days of having a school council. One once did have a mechanism by which teachers and others could engage in deciding what the curriculum should be; the QCA, in part, can do that. It is defined at the level of the institution and it is defined by the young. In all of those things, if I may make my own point about the values question, surely we have come to the point where we are recognising multiple identities, and the question is how you layer those identities whilst respecting, indeed valuing, difference. Leaving aside, to Ms Jones, whether one would want to say to a secondary school in Crossmaglen "You're British; you'd better learn what British values are," I do raise the question, do we think that in the most challenging circumstances we have sufficient teachers with sufficient competence to handle those issues of identity and value, and to do so in such a way as protects what may be, in some circumstances, a pretty small minority of children in that particular classroom, who, for whatever reason, may not be part of the majority? That was why I paused, about how far one should push some of these things into our system.

Q223 Mr Marsden: I think that is a very valid point. My own brief comment to that is, however, that really it rather echoes what Trevor Phillips said, I think, some time ago, that the danger is, if we do not have a discussion about values within a sort of pluralist, liberal - in the broadest sense of the word - context, there will be a discussion about values and definitions put on values by other people and other groups whose conclusion you will not like particularly. Jessica, can I come to you on this, because what you have been talking about again is the linkage between what goes on in school and what goes on outside. We have had some interesting evidence here about what is being done post-14, the initiatives being done via agencies, the Learning and Skills Council, etc. Is that a very important part, the post-Tomlinson agenda, of defining citizenship education as well?

Ms Gold: The 14s to 17s, yes, it is, because what they said was it needs to be threaded throughout it, did they not, that it is a continuing process. We talk very much about school council skills, which I guess could be regarded as citizenship skills, could be regarded as life skills, soft skills, business skills, these are team-working, tolerance, problem-solving, listening, respect, vocalising, all these kinds of skills. In fact, I was at the big London debate, round the corner, on Saturday and hearing from London First and the complaint that there are not adequate skills within Londoners to meet the jobs need; so clearly it needs to go all the way through, from the youngest age, all the way up. Again, the schools probably are not yet really given the opportunity to focus on it all the way through in these skills, which is what employers are looking for as well. Yes, I think it is very key with the whole 14-19 agenda.

Q224 Mr Marsden: Raji and Jules, from your comments again, and contradict me if you want to, it strikes me that you are very uneasy about the idea that anybody, certainly anybody in Government, should be defining what form citizenship education should take. If that is the case, who are the people, who are the stakeholders, apart from the obvious ones, who are the students engaged in the process?

Ms Hunjan: I am not quite sure where or when I said that I do not think the Government should be involved.

Q225 Mr Marsden: I did not say that. I said you were - queasy is perhaps a loaded word - cautious about this, and again I think the issue of whether values are imposed, certainly I would not support that myself, it is a question of involvement, where is the balance between involvement and imposition, is it not?

Ms Hunjan: My concern is we have a citizenship education curriculum that we all want to see made better, and putting out statements saying "We now want schools to do this," without recognising what they are doing already and what they already need help with, that is my concern. In terms of who should be involved in this, I am really pleased that the QCA has taken a lead in redefining the citizenship curriculum, and, as far as I can tell, they have been quite active, involving schools, people like us in this community, young people, there has been some really good consultation and I think that is really important. In relation to the 14‑19 curriculum, I think the active citizenship side is very exciting. I think it is a shame that it has been diluted a little bit, because there are some really good examples of schools working with their communities to encourage all sorts of skills linked to citizenship education. There is a real link at the moment between community involvement, citizenship education and young enterprise, so instead of getting young people - I have got a school in Bristol - to go and help the aged by giving them food packages, it was about helping them to identify what some of their problems were and trying to come up with solutions. One of the problems, for example, is that, elderly people on their own, if they are sick and they manage to call an ambulance, it wants somebody who is there to help them, and if they are not able to say what the problem is that they keep these packages in the frig, which give lots of information about what their illnesses are and what their ailments are, etc. This is something which has been devised by a group of young people who are now campaigning to make this work.

Q226 Mr Marsden: That is a part of citizenship in itself, because it is connecting across the generations?

Ms Hunjan: Exactly; it is a part of citizenship in itself, it is about community cohesion, it is about bringing young people and adults together, it is about making young people feel that they can actually do something, and it is not about academic achievement. You can involve all sorts of young people, with all sorts of interests and backgrounds.

Chairman: That sort of leads us into the next section of our questioning, on which Roberta is going to lead.

Q227 Dr Blackman-Woods: I think much of our discussion this afternoon has been about how to make the citizenship curriculum come alive for people and I know the National Youth Agency have written on this. Why are schools finding it so difficult to implement the active citizenship part of the curriculum and what stands in their way?

Mr Wylie: They have a heavy workload of things which, arguably, are more explicit, are headlines, because they are being judged against five A to C's and performance concerns of that sort. Maybe some schools have been a bit in retreat from their communities, actually some of them do not always serve a community because of the transport arrangements, the youngsters are moving, especially in London, across vast areas. I can quite see that in that context a particular school might find it a bit harder to engage with local groups who might provide opportunities for voluntary action, etc., plus the natural reluctance of some teachers, I think, to move far beyond the taught curriculum. Of course, many do and many are engaged and one would not want to label the whole teaching profession, but I think there is a natural pressure to do things in the classroom and get that sorted, and this might be seen, in some circumstances, as being a bit extra.

Mr Mason: I adhere to that, from my own experience of my school. It is also within the school a lack of knowledge about other agencies which are out there which exist, so that can help them, whether it is within their immediate local community or the wider community, on a number of areas whereby they can make citizenship a lot more active and, as I said earlier, go beyond the actual classroom. It is partly going back to Tom's aspect not just about teachers' reticence to be involved but also how high up it is politically within the senior management teams a leadership agenda for the school. One of the things I thought might help ratchet citizenship higher up the agenda is around having that as a status for a specialism within a school, so ultimately you can have science or art, etc. If citizenship becomes an opportunity for having a specialism within a school, it can be used to, where a school is doing excellent work, be promoted as a beacon and other schools in that area, or that part of the country, can learn those lessons. Equally, where it is not seen that prominently, it can be used actually to raise the standard and also begin to integrate across the whole of the school.

Ms Gold: School Councils UK is made up of teachers and youth workers and actually the majority of my staff are from a youth work background. From our perspective, teachers are simply not trained to do participation. The whole process of handing over leadership opportunities to young people is simply not part of their training and they do not really understand it, and it goes completely against the grain of how they have been trained. Let me give you an example. A school council needs to have a set of minutes produced for it. The whole pressure on teachers is to produce high-quality evidence of what is happening, da‑da‑da‑da‑da, so a great set of minutes, smart, well laid out, and all that, but actually, if young people are doing the minutes, they probably will not necessarily look that good, or be that good, because young people are not that experienced at producing minutes. It is much more important that young people produce the minutes and they are not as good, but that would be quite hard for the teacher, to see a not brilliant set of minutes, because that might reflect badly on the teacher when someone comes round and looks at the minutes. They are not trained in that process of handing over leadership opportunities and they find that quite scary, and changing their seat in the classroom. For instance, again, just coming back to class councils and form councils, which are opportunities for everyone in each form group to have a meeting opportunity on a regular basis, led by young people from the age of five upwards, and the teacher sitting on the side to let those opportunities happen is foreign for lots of teachers, to be able to take that side-seat to let young people have a go.

Ms Hunjan: I am a trustee of the Citizenship Foundation so I am going to second all the training evidence that you have heard and just say that, for me, I think it is almost like citizenship needs a relaunch. When it first came out in 2001, as far as I remember it, the DfES, and I went to loads of these roadshows back then, was saying "Light-touch approach, cross-curriculum, you're doing it already, you just have to tick a few boxes, it'll be fine." Actually that is not the reality of it and quite quickly they were admitting that was not the reality of it, and Ofsted was telling us that was not the reality of it. In a way, we almost need this kind of relaunch, which goes with this new QCA curriculum which is coming out, which admits actually, "You know what, citizenship education is quite hard because it's different from other subjects; but we're all going to help you, we're all going to be involved, we're all going to value this, we're all going to see it's important and we're going to put some money and funding into this and we're going to raise the stakes now." I think that would be quite exciting.

Q228 Dr Blackman-Woods: I think that is an interesting point which I will come back to in a minute or two. When I was doing the consultation on youth matters in my constituency a lot of the young people in schools ticked the box to say that they wanted to be more involved in the community, but when I asked them why they were not, it was often that they had no knowledge whatsoever of the community and voluntary groups which existed in their neighbourhood. I wonder if you have got any idea of the sorts of percentages of schools which have those very active links with voluntary or community groups in their own area?

Ms Hunjan: Stats I cannot give you. What we can say is that we have a network of participation workers, so that is anybody for whom working with children and young people in a participatory way is part of their job. A lot of those workers say to us that it is really hard to get into schools because they are either invited into schools for one-off consultations and then they are told "Right, you do the consultation and then go again," or they are invited in by one teacher and the rest of the school is not really committed to their involvement anyway. It seems to me that, to develop it, it has to be embedded into the school plans for the year, thinking about who they are going to involve from the voluntary and community sector and why, why that involvement is important and what they are going to learn from those people and keep within their school, rather than allowed to leave once those people leave the school as well.

Q229 Dr Blackman-Woods: It is not only a one-way problem, is it?

Ms Hunjan: No.

Q230 Dr Blackman-Woods: Some of the things that the schools identified through the youth matters consultation was that sometimes, for example, pensioners groups did not want young people, they were worried about young people, they had an image, they would not want to bring them in, it was a negative image of young people. What do you think can be done to break down those sorts of barriers and have you got examples of good practice, are there other schools that we can learn from?

Mr Wylie: I think there are a number of examples of intergenerational contact between groups of young people and adults. I suppose it would not always start with the school. We know that young people are actually quite active in volunteering and voluntary action in their communities that may not come down a school nexus, it comes down to the fact that they are doing a Duke of Edinburgh Award, or they are engaged in Girl Guiding, etc., and we should not neglect those things just because they are not captured in the school data set. There are programmes, Chairman, there was a celebration last week of Young Roots, which is one which we do with the Heritage Lottery Fund, which is about young people finding out about their own heritage. I think there is a whole variety of voluntary action opportunities but they will not always be seen through the prism of the schools' eyes.

Q231 Dr Blackman-Woods: My question really is about how the schools learn best practice, so they do need to be picking up those sorts of examples?

Mr Mason: I think it is partly a role from the centre, although I do know certain schools when they get something from the DfES they see it as this being something that is being imposed on them. I suppose, partly going back to Raji's response around the democratic involvement, if other related agencies, whether it is the QCA, the Learning and Skills Council, etc., have even just, say, a link with relevant external organisations, such as our organisation, so that thereby there is a different avenue for them just to hear about different agencies which can help them. The main thing, I agree with what you said, is that lack of information about where to go and who is out there and also from the school it is about "Well, how do you know that this organisation is a trusted, reputable organisation?" because they have rightly got to think about the concerns of their pupils and the status of the school as well.

Q232 Dr Blackman-Woods: Is the DfES doing enough to inform schools of what is available, and is it supporting schools enough to deliver an active citizenship curriculum, and should it be doing that or should somebody else be doing that?

Mr Mason: I do not think it can rely solely on the DfES. My limited knowledge would say they are not doing enough, just in relation to awareness-raising of organisations which are out there.

Ms Hunjan: There is a concern with the DfES, is there not, because they have got this policy of not sending too much information to schools, which seems really bizarre to me, because when I was a teacher I would have really looked at the information that came from the DfES, so that seems to be a bit problematic. I think there is a real role here for the local authority and we need to think about the amount of power that local authorities have and what we are doing with that power, because LEA advisers are people who are trusted and can do some of that screening for schools. There is not anything worse than inviting in a speaker and actually it turns out that they are just not very good and it is disappointing; it is about helping schools to build links with their local voluntary and community sector organisations. I think that the whole extended schools agenda is a really good starting-point for perhaps that happening, because now you have got people in schools like extended schools co‑ordinators, who could work alongside the citizenship teacher and alongside the national healthy schools co‑ordinator and have more of a combined strategic approach to making some of these things really happen.

Q233 Dr Blackman-Woods: I think it is really interesting that you have mentioned extended schools. What about children's trusts, is that likely to bring together the statutory and the voluntary sectors, or do you think children's trusts could be used more widely as a vehicle for citizenship education?

Mr Mason: I think it could be used widely, but my one concern I would like to see ensured is that those who fall in the further end of the age groups of those 14, 16 and 18 year olds are also encapsulated rather than just towards a trust ending and just focusing on the predominant majority of the children age range.

Mr Wylie: Of course, they have a duty, under Outcome Four of the Every Child Matters agenda, about making a positive contribution, and perhaps your Committee, Chairman, later in the year, might like to look at how the implementation of youth matters is going, once it begins to bed in. I know you have done some useful work already on the Every Child Matters agenda, but that would give you an opportunity to look at how that is connected for a slightly older age group.

Q234 Dr Blackman-Woods: Have you noticed a difference, or have you seen any evidence of a difference in engagement in the community between faith- and non-faith-based schools?

Ms Hunjan: I have got an example of a faith-based school in London, called the Grieg Academy, which is one of the new schools, it is a faith-based school but it welcomes children and young people from all faiths and backgrounds. They have been doing quite a lot of work to promote better relationships between young people and other sectors of the community within Hackney, where they are based. They have been doing a lot of the things, for example, working with the market traders, so it is about young people working with groups of adults that already have some kind of power and say in the community. Also they have been working to improve relationships between young people and the police and involving their students really in consultations where they know change is going to happen, where it is not a consultation just for the sake of it. If they know there is a budget linked to that consultation and there is going to be outcome, they are involving those young people and I think that is quite an exciting approach that they are taking.

Ms Gold: It is a very interesting question. It is just a bit of a hunch really. I do not think you can generalise because I think all the faith schools are probably quite different within the different faith communities. However, certainly within some streams, there is a strong community involvement, morality and philosophy, which will drive some of their activities. I guess that is one of the advantages; there are advantages and disadvantages of faith-based schools, but one of the advantages probably is that it is much easier to find a shared moral code within the school's community, and quite often that will be around being aware of your community, actively involved locally and taking notice. I am Jewish and I notice that a lot of the Jewish schools are involved with school councils. There is no empirical evidence.

Chairman: I want to draw down a bit now to the impact of citizenship education.

Q235 Stephen Williams: Perhaps I could start with Raji, because a colleague has made some sweeping claims for the benefits of citizenship in schools, that it has got a clear link with increased academic achievement, better behaviour patterns and more skills development, indeed better decision-making in schools. How robust is the evidence for that?

Ms Hunjan: I certainly would like to see Carnegie funding some more research, as we have done, I would like other people to, because the evidence is there but what it is difficult to do is isolate participation as being the only thing which has made that happen in that school, be that improved academic success or be that better policies. Not least, I think, because probably there are not that many schools in the country which can claim that all their children and young people are involved in or participating in decision-making, often it is a few, or a year group, or a privileged few. The evidence is there, small bits of evidence exist which are making statements about this. When you collect that evidence together, it feels that, in combination, there is clear evidence that actually, by involving young people in decision-making, it does lead to some school improvement, whatever it is that school might be targeting.

Q236 Stephen Williams: Does this research come from a particular study which Carnegie has done in selective schools?

Ms Hunjan: This study is secondary evidence. We have looked at evidence which already exists and we quickly discarded perceived impacts. We published a series of case studies where we have asked schools "What is your perceived impacts of this," and schools have said "This is what we think the benefits are," and we have published that in that way. In terms of our research, it is all secondary evidence, we discarded anything we thought did not look like clear evidence, but anything which stood up to some scrutiny we have included it.

Q237 Stephen Williams: Perhaps this goes back to our first session that Gordon Marsden was asking questions on; is there not a danger that this actually reduces citizenship to some measurable things like school behaviour and academic achievement, rather than why citizenship is important in itself, and are these the right sorts of outcomes that we would want schools to be trumpeting?

Ms Hunjan: Our research is not just about the school improvement agenda. We do try to look wider than that, at the impact on the community of involving young people. It is difficult to say whether involving them will lead to them voting more, but a lot of schools are telling us, "By engaging them in a wide range of interests we feel, by talking to them and working with them, that they are more likely to vote in the future and be more involved." I think that citizenship education was put into the curriculum for a clear reason; we wanted young people to be more involved in democracy and the society we live in, so I think it is important that we look to see whether citizenship education is helping to make those things happen.

Stephen Williams: Is there not a danger here that the sorts of schools that would take part and do citizenship well are in middle-class areas; the sorts of pupils who will derive the most benefit from citizenship being taught well are likely to be perhaps middle-class pupils, or pupils who come from a supportive family environment? We do not actually need to define this in class terms. What about the kids who come from a more disadvantaged background, perhaps they have been excluded from school; what is citizenship going to do with them? I notice that the National Youth Agency has said a few things about this and maybe Mr Wylie would like to comment.

Q238 Chairman: Tom, you did shake your head, at one stage?

Mr Wylie: Yes. I shook my head at the proposition that it would only connect with the more advantaged, because I do think there are examples, the Lewisham example, which I think you know well, Deptford Green School, a special school, on citizenship, which I visited recently, in another context, would strike me as serving a more disadvantaged neighbourhood. What seems to me to be important there is that it connects with the real lives of young people. I can quite see that the more advantaged, highly literate, more academic youngster, offered a particular kind of citizenship curriculum, will do it better, because they can do it, but actually, surely, if the school's work is connecting with the lived experience of the young, connecting with the issues that matter to them, they will turn out to be better citizens. I do not think there is any evidence on that; they do not know that yet. It will be a long time, even to get the voting rates right, will it not, which may be there are other factors than what the school teaches, etc. I think it is arguably even more important for the disadvantaged, but the corollary of that is, if it is genuinely to connect with them and help them to learn, it must be of a particular nature.

Q239 Stephen Williams: What about some pupils who have been excluded from school and are perhaps in Pupil Referral Units or even in a Young Offenders Institution?

Mr Wylie: It is even more crucial then that they are offered a set of experiences which help them to learn what it is to be a citizen. Surely the crucial job, and that is another story, is it not, what is the curriculum in a YOI which really deals with restorative justice and helps them find a form of redemption about their past experience and reconnect with our community, it is absolutely crucial, given the high levels of recidivism. Citizenship in the deepest sense is even more important to those youngsters whom, for whatever reason, we have put temporarily outside the community.

Ms Gold: If we are talking about participation, the participation side of citizenship, there are numerous heads who will tell you that they have managed to turn around failing schools by setting up active participation for young people, including heads who will turn around and say, "Okay, our school has just failed its Ofsted; this is what I'm planning to do, and the staff are planning to do, to turn that around. Now I want you, the students, to come up with your plan as to what you are going to do to help us in this process." There is lots of anecdotal evidence from headteachers, where very much so they think that the school council has turned things around. In terms of exclusions and the issues around exclusions, we commissioned some research, five or six years ago now, by Professor Lynn Davies, University of Birmingham, looking at school councils and exclusions, it was snapshot research, and now we are involved in actual research, which is much longer-term work, and it was comparing more participative schools and less participative schools from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. The more participative schools had fewer exclusions, and clear messages were being sent to the students, through the participation structures, that their views mattered, that the schools were happier places, relationships were better and exclusions were lower. One of our trainers was headteacher in a primary school in Plymouth and she tells of experiences where the school council said to her "We don't want that child to be excluded because we can't help him" or her, "once they have gone or once they have been excluded." The kids wanted to set up an inclusion committee to support the kids who had problems with behaving and had problems with keeping control of themselves within school. There are all sorts of ways in which, and this is one of the projects which we have been talking to the Behaviour Unit recently about, looking at how pupil participation can support behaviour in young people who are more at risk of losing control of themselves. There are all sorts of strategies with which young people can support their peers, in ways which teachers cannot, therefore preventing exclusions. Obviously, I agree with Tom completely, and we looked into doing some work in YOIs, which we never quite got off the ground, but it is just as important because these are young people who have been failed by the system, or have failed within the system, systematically, and to start giving them opportunities where they can succeed is very important.

Q240 Helen Jones: We have had some evidence about the impact of citizenship on community cohesion. The problem I think we are struggling with is that people tend to see community cohesion as meaning very different things, and some people seem to define it as reducing prejudice towards people different from oneself, some define it as working with community groups, and so on. What is your definition of community cohesion, in that sense, and do you think that citizenship does contribute to that: anyone?

Mr Mason: I do not have a definition of community cohesion but, going back to its link to citizenship, if you just take the (Heinz, Marshall and Wooster ?) definition about citizenship being seen predominantly in local terms but then it builds up in terms of the levels of local, national, global, and also linking into the NFER's work around post-16 citizenship education, where it talked about being tailored to the needs of, say, community cohesion from one community to another community, it will differ depending on those most pivotal and pressing needs that need to be dealt with in that community. It could be around tackling anti-social behaviour, it could be around litter, say, it could be about intergenerational work. I do not think you can just be totally prescriptive. You can have a broad framework about what the ethos of community cohesion is about but actually what it means practically will differ from community to community, and that is what is making citizenship real and active, not just for those schoolchildren but for everyone in that community.

Mr Wylie: We could offer you a definition, if I might. How about those processes which help to create safer neighbourhoods and a greater sense of personal security and help to generate bridging social capital, if you want to have another technical phrase in the discussion; because I do think it is about that. It is how you create those norms and processes in communities within which people feel confident, but you do not want a social capital of the gang, you do not want a social capital of the ghetto, you want a social capital which enables people to move in and out of neighbourhoods with confidence.

Q241 Helen Jones: Absolutely, and that was what I was going to come on to really, because Jules said it begins locally, and I do not think that anyone would dissent from that, but in many areas, and Tom gave the example of Northern Ireland, which has its own particular problems, but even in many cities in Great Britain, communities are very divided. The question is then how we assist young people to move out of their own community, to feel comfortable working with others in the wider community: do you have any good examples for the Committee about how that has been done anywhere?

Ms Gold: Certainly within schools, and many schools are very mixed communities with people from a whole variety of ethnic backgrounds, there are a number of examples of how the student council has been able to improve communication between different community groups within the school. One example is of a school where it was through the student council that a prayer room was established for those students who needed it during the day. By creating a community council, which in a way is what it is, the different students from the school get a chance to talk together and hear each other, because I would say that part of community cohesion is actually about people seeing each other as people, as opposed to their label, and acknowledging, even if there are different ethnic traditions or different ethnic backgrounds or different religious commitments, that ultimately they are human beings, with many of the same needs, with shared priorities for their own local area. It is by enabling them to come together and to talk together and to work together and to deal with any conflicts which arise and learning to listen and learning to respect which can stem from good student participation within the school and then gradually to reach out by them seeing good practice on the school level.

Ms Hunjan: I think we need to keep an eye on the extended schools agenda and what is going on there as well. I went to a presentation by a school on the Isle of Dogs, at a CSV event, and the woman was talking about this sort of diverse community that they are working with and they were quite excited by the extended school agenda, because it does turn the school into a community hub, if you like, and it enables the school to open itself up to people. Actually what schools are doing, I think, is trying not to be too ambitious in their first steps and trying to do things like bringing people in for lunch, or cookery classes, or discussion groups, and through childcare, just ways of bringing people within the community together. I am governor of a special school in Wandsworth for children with emotional behavioural difficulties and everyone in that local community wants that school to shut down, so what better way to try to deal with that than by getting some of the children to invite some of the local people in, by first of all putting together a newsletter and distributing that and then inviting them in for what they call community lunch. I think that the extended schools agenda is something we need to keep an eye on and on how it progresses in encouraging schools to become more at the heart of communities.

Q242 Mr Carswell: Why do they want the school to close down?

Ms Hunjan: This particular one, because it is a school for boys with emotional behavioural difficulties. I will not say any more about them.

Mr Wylie: We have got that quite extensively in booklets of this kind, different devices for engaging young people and one I think of locally is Fitzrovia, which is a sports and arts project, and those have classically been used as ways of bringing groups together around festivals and sharing experiences of that sort. This past year I have been the Assessor for the much-lamented ODPM on the Beacon Council Scheme and so have been visiting a number of authorities on the theme of 'positive youth engagement' and what is striking to me there is the different devices which authorities are using to hear the voices and influence of young people and which brings them together, because if you have got an election you cannot all be from one group, you are from different groups. I think of going to Wakefield, where they have got a scheme called Wakie's Watchdogs, which is a kind of junior Ofsted, which goes round the youth provision of Wakefield and judges it, "Is this fit for purpose?" Again, intrinsically, that is bound to have to have different perspectives, because it might be suitable for white, working-class youngsters but not so appealing to Asian girls, and so on, and I think there is a whole variety of local devices of that sort.

Q243 Helen Jones: You gave some very good examples there of how these things could work in a school which had a mixed community. What I really want to follow up with you is that many schools are not a mixed community, they might be in areas which are racially divided, they might be in areas which are socially divided. For example, in a comparatively well-off area, you could engage with the community around you very well, as a school, but that does not lead your pupils on to look at people who may well be a lot worse off and they are living in very different communities. I accept absolutely that the first step has to be taken locally. My question really then is about how we build on that and move it on? I think Tom has given one example. I wonder if you have any others? Otherwise what we are in danger of doing is defining the community very narrowly.

Ms Gold: Certainly I could give examples of Youth Councils. I can think of numerous Youth Councils where they take representatives from the student council in school and all the schools in the area and the young people come together and you really do have a huge variety of young people and the backgrounds that they have come from coming together through the Youth Council and then there is a lot of dissemination in both directions.

Ms Hunjan: There was another scheme that I heard of, I think it was in Bedfordshire, around learning walks, which is about schools basically going into other schools and walking around it and finding out how other schools are doing things differently. That is something which is done quite a lot between teachers, but actually once you start doing it between students you are breaking down some of those barriers and some of those stereotypes that students might have of each other. I think that is a really important thing, and building those kinds of local networks of schools, so that they are actually working together on some of these issues.

Q244 Helen Jones: Can we look also at how we could make schools more open to the community, as well as talking about young people moving out into their community, doing more to use our schools and the facilities that we have in schools to bring in different people. I think we were very impressed when we went to Finland and we went to a school where the old people in the neighbourhood could all come in and have their lunch there, and so you were breaking down the barriers between the generations, behaviour was improved, and so on. Do you find that schools are still rather nervous about doing that, and, if so, not particularly that but those sorts of things, how can we encourage them to move forward?

Ms Hunjan: I have already made a comment about extended schools and I think that is a way of bringing people into schools and working with young people. I think that is probably the example I would give.

Mr Mason: I think, partly going back to my comment as well earlier about knowing agencies out there, one example of an organisation which could facilitate that is CSV, community service volunteers, because they have their annual Make a Difference day, which is just promoting one day where citizens do something for their local community in its broadest sense. Over the last couple of years we have worked with them to help get more schools and youth groups and Youth Councils involved and engaged within that, because of the CSV's network, and they will receive a pack with some ideas and guidance, going back to the thing about schools maybe not knowing how to go about organising something. The CSV have a number of local action desks, so thereby, depending what part of the country you are in, you will get that action desk contact number and they can put you in touch with local community organisations where you could do some sort of work for that one day. That can be then just the start of the process, leading to a long-term relationship with a number of agencies in that wider community.

Ms Hunjan: Maybe it is also something our local elected representatives can help us with as well, actually. They are in a great position to hold meetings, events and consultations within schools which bring people into schools, which can then work with those young people in consultation processing, so I think there is a role for you guys as well.

Chairman: Thank you very much.

Helen Jones: If the head will let us in.

Q245 Chairman: It is interesting though, in the generality I have been sitting here fascinated by the way you answer different questions. You all get energised and excited about the whole participation agenda, whether it is with community groups or within schools, it is the participatory approach you obviously like. Where you have got most ratty, if I can say that, a bit, was when we discussed the Government's agenda about values. You really did not want to talk about that. As soon as we moved off values you were happy. Am I right in thinking that you are much happier about teaching citizenship through activity and participation than you are having people sat down and told "These are the British values and these are what you should subscribe to"?

Ms Hunjan: I think active participation can lead to really good discussions about values, and actually, once people have worked in that way with each other, it builds trust, it builds relationships, then it is much easier to talk about values. People have a fear of talking about these things because they are scared that they are going to offend the person next to them, but actually, if you have been participating and working together and then you start talking about values, you are going to have a much richer conversation. Going back to my point, I really do not have a problem with the Government making this announcement but I just was concerned as to why they were making this announcement today and what they were making it in relation to; that is my concern.

Chairman: That is very interesting. Douglas, you do not think much of this citizenship programme, do you; you once said, in a conversation, that you were worried about brain-washing. You have listened to some of the evidence today; what is your view, after what you have heard?

Mr Carswell: Faced with such assumptions, with which I so profoundly disagree, I find it difficult to know where to begin to ask questions. I disagree profoundly with the cultural relativism which I think has been implicit in some of the answers. I also profoundly disagree; in Britain there is a tradition of national identity evolving organically and bottom-up, unlike European countries, which have a tradition of top-down definitions of national identity - France, Germany, Italy - we do not have that, thank goodness, no attempt to define what our language should be or - God forbid - what our national costume should be.

Chairman: Would you like ask with relation to Raji and Jules, because actually they were making a very similar point; I think they would celebrate the bottom-up creation of values. Would you not have something in common with the view that they were taking?

Mr Carswell: I would say that there is an attempt by a quasi-state quango organisation to promote cultural relativism as part of a national identity which is as bad a top-down attempt to define national identity as anything. That is a statement rather than a question.

Chairman: I cannot really elicit a question from you?

Mr Carswell: I am afraid not.

Chairman: Then we will move on. Stephen, you are going to take us through 'pupil voice and participation'.

Stephen Williams: I have tried through a voice. I am sure this will not be nearly as interesting as that which might have been.

Mr Carswell: I have listened with great interest. Thank you.

Q246 Stephen Williams: I am not sure who might start with this. What do young people actually tell each of your organisations about their experience of citizenship, and who is giving them a real role in running the school?

Ms Hunjan: A range; an absolute range. Some will still say the citizenship education curriculum needs looking at, some do not even know that it exists in the schools, some will talk about it very, very positively; so an absolute range, which is the worrying part of citizenship education, I think. Whether you approve of this or not, a lot of us really believe that it is a positive introduction to the curriculum, it is something that we really value, and it is a shame that not all students are getting a positive experience of it, an enriched experience of it, and that is worrying, I think.

Ms Gold: It is interesting; the National Foundation for Educational Research have got this longitudinal programme which I noticed Bernard Crick talked about. I did not realise that it cost £21/2 million, but there you go. They do ask questions about the number of school councils of secondary headteachers, and the statistic was that 96 per cent of secondary heads said that they had a school council and 44 per cent of students said they had been involved in electing their school council representatives. It is now obviously the thing to say that you have got a school council, but clearly there is no real consistency on the ground, in terms of what is happening.

Q247 Stephen Williams: Is that, Chairman, reticence on behalf of the students then in political parties, probably my own, and should we all have this experience of getting candidates to come forward for something they might think is a thankless task? Just because there is a school council there, it does not oblige pupils to take part, does it, so maybe there are no elections because people are not challenged, or the most popular girl in the class stands and no‑one stands against her?

Ms Gold: Every school in this country should have high-quality, high-profile student elections for their councils. If we want democracy to be successful in this country and if we want young people to be committed to democracy and committed to voting, every school should see it as a priority to have high-quality, high-profile student council elections. The only reason why that is not the case is because teachers have not been given the right resources, teachers do not understand how to do it; presently we are trying to get funding for a school council election pack, we are not really getting anywhere with that at the moment. Certainly there are issues, if the council is not very good, of course there will be issues around young people wanting to take part and that is absolutely part of the equation, and schools have to improve on how they do their student participation in their student councils. The reality is that a lot of school council elections are organised in a very haphazard way, a very low-profile way, very inconsistent from one class to the other, and that has to be sorted out.

Q248 Stephen Williams: It is not rocket science, surely, to hold an election and any teacher should know how to organise an election, it is not difficult; and does it need a resource pack, and what you have just said is very lopsided and patchy?

Ms Gold: Why should they know how to organise an election; a 25 year old student, trained to teach physics: why should they know how to organise an election?

Mr Mason: On the issue of pupil voice, last year's Ofsted report on citizenship being taught in schools found that 88 per cent of children wanted an increased role for students in the running of their school, so not just their student council. That goes back to the point I mentioned earlier around having a student council should be one plank of the way in which you have pupil participation across a school, so it is the student council, it is about having the associate governors on the governing body, it is about having either a termly or an annual pupil satisfaction survey, comment boxes, circle time, notice-boards, it is a number of mechanisms, rather than just going "There's one model; that's the way it will work." On your point about elections, not every school pupil is going to be confident enough to put themselves forward in an election or feel comfortable enough to stand up or produce a statement saying "This is why you should vote." Equally, they should have an opportunity to have a say about the decisions about that school, rather than it just being left to a small group of young people to decide; so you need a balance.

Ms Hunjan: Funnily enough, quite a number of students we asked that question of, and have asked this question, in relation to our studies, would say things like, "Actually, we would rather teachers just chose for us, or maybe even picked out of a hat," because there is this real fear, I think, about fairness, about who gets involved, and I think there is a concern, whether it is genuine or not, that once people are involved in the school council that is a privilege, those are the privileged ones.

Q249 Mr Marsden: They are the new prefects?

Ms Hunjan: Yes; they are like the new prefects. What Jessica would say is that a good school council is when those people are elected, or chosen, or whatever, and then trained and supported in actually engaging with the other students; that is one side to it. I am also in agreement with Jules; it is about a varied approach. Not everyone wants to be an elected representative, not everybody in the school wants to be involved in all of the school, some young people might be interested in only one single issue, some young people might only want to be consulted, they might not want to be actively participating in focus groups, so it is about a varied approach which engages everybody.

Mr Wylie: I heard your question about citizenship in general and not just the participation devices. We tend to work more with youngsters who have not done terribly well at school, for one reason or another, and I think what they say is very much with what Gordon Marsden was saying in his remarks, which is, they do not really understand how things work, they do not understand what this tax thing is, what this National Insurance thing is; "Why are these guys coming round for health and safety?" They have not got a grasp of the basic functioning of democracy, etc., and, perhaps more seriously, they do not believe that their views will be properly considered, have been properly considered in the past, will be properly considered now. I do not think they are extreme about that. The youngsters we often work with are not saying "I don't want to do what you say." I think many youngsters actually are desperately realistic, arguably too realistic, about the decision-making process and how long it takes a council to do anything, etc. I think both of those things, a lack of knowledge and a lack of belief in their own capacity to produce change. I would just observe, in answer, a hundred years of formal religious education does not seem to have produced a more church-going, arguably a more faith-aware, etc., society, and that is what gives some of us pause about arguing for too much teaching of citizenship, as distinct from learning and practising citizenship.

Chairman: Yes; certainly the practical thing which seems to engage if they are willing.

Q250 Stephen Williams: I am getting the impression, from the answers that we have heard from the witnesses, that there is a sort of model school, a citizenship school utopia out there, for the witnesses, where we have got the annual appraisal by the students of the school and the suggestion boxes, the behaviour panel, the class council as well as the school council. Is there sort of a model school which would be fantastic for citizenship, and is it realistic to expect every school in the country to aspire to have that model status?

Mr Mason: Going back to what I said earlier about citizenship being started at the local level, I think within a framework of citizenship education and a strategy these mechanisms can be proposed, and the ones which are most appropriate for the school, its ethos, its pupils, its resourcing level, will be the ones which will work best. Rather than saying "You have to do everything," it is saying "These are a number of ways in which you can elicit and support and foster pupil participation across the board, and the ones which will have the most meaning and most resonance for your school are the ones to take up."

Q251 Stephen Williams: Is there a consensus out there, between the DfES and all your bodies and the other bodies which are not here at the moment, as to what a model school would be for citizenship, or are we still getting there?

Ms Gold: What is interesting is that I would say, no, it is not realistic, however we define this model school, I would say, no, it is not realistic, but obviously you get there, the reality is that the schools we see as being successfully participative have heads who genuinely believe that young people's voice is really important and can really make a big difference in school. All heads do not believe that and all heads do not function in that way, and participative schools, effective participative schools, have heads who work in that way with their staff as well. The amount of schools where the staff do not feel they have a voice and are not respected is really quite significant; there is no way that those schools where the staff do not feel respected and have a voice can have control. You hear more and more actually; we did a project with the QCA on their Futures project and they were telling us that the amount of teachers who think they cannot do this or that or the other because of the curriculum, the DfES Innovation Unit have the right to lift a statute if a school is to innovate, and apparently 95 per cent of the requests they have from schools, saying "Will you lift statute so we can do X?" there is nothing that needs lifting, they can do it anyway. The problem is that headteachers are not confident enough in their staff to empower them to innovate and to try stuff, when they can do that, very often, and then staff do not feel like that and then they will say "Why should these kids have a say when we don't, when we haven't got one?"

Q252 Stephen Williams: Are there limits on pupil involvement? Chairman, I think your Committee, in the last Parliament, before I was here, the report on school dinners; what if pupils in a school said "None of this Jamie Oliver stuff; we want chips, a Mars bar and a can of coke for our lunch," and they organise a petition, a majority of the pupils sign it and present that to their school council then on to the head and the governors? What should the response of the school be, in that circumstance?

Ms Gold: A school is the community, is it not, a school is parents, staff, governors, students, and that is the model we promote. We do not say that student councils are young people's rights and that is it, young people, okay; it is a whole community.

Q253 Stephen Williams: Would that be their impression; if they are being given this right to participate and if they do not get what they want out of it, they will become cynical as to why they have been invited to participate?

Mr Mason: Not if they are fully informed about the process, so rather than just say "We want to hear what you think about school dinners," they are not told that, their decision will be the ultimate say, or that will be put into the mix of suggestions. If that is not explained, what is going to happen with them and why they are being asked to consider a subject then the resentment will grow.

Mr Carswell: Telling them very early on that their vote does not indeed count, which is good training for later life when they are going to take part in real elections.

Q254 Chairman: There is one person here who was at school dinners today, in Millbank School, just here in Pimlico, and, I have to say, no chips and extremely good food and I do not know participatory or whether there was a school council. On a rider to Stephen's question, what is the record, is there a record, is there some information which you could tell the Committee about, about the difference that school councils make? This time last week, or was it last Wednesday, we had a whole session on bullying. That is the real difficulty; school dinners are easy, in a sense, are they not? What about bullying, how much difference do school councils make in changing an atmosphere of bullying in school?

Ms Gold: I am still shocked by the number of schools I go to and I say "Do you have a bullying policy?" and they say "Yes," and I will say "Were the students involved in creating it?" and they will say "No." Then I will say "Do the students know about it?" and they will think that maybe they do, but probably they do not. Stephen Twigg observed, when he was a Minister in the DfES, that the most effective bullying strategies were ones which young people were actively involved in, because the reality is only students know what is happening in school. Teachers' experience and young people's experience in school are completely different.

Mr Wylie: I am with Jessica on that but I would not pin it myself simply to the school's council. I think there are examples of peer engagement in dealing with bullying and in the end actually it is peer engagement which will end bullying. There are examples where young people have asked for 'make space over mental health conditions' are better in schools, somewhere where they can go and chill out, so to speak. They are forever complaining about the state of the lavatories, and we know it has health and attainment consequences if they are not acted upon, those sorts of things. If it is simply the advice of the school council, it will not be rich enough to handle all of these issues.

Q255 Stephen Williams: You are clairvoyant, I thought I might ask something about bullying, because I was rather disturbed by an answer that Jessica gave to a colleague earlier, about, I think it was, a behaviour panel said that they did not want a particular child to be excluded. Is there not a danger there, is not that crossing a boundary; what if that child was a bully and their mates were on this behaviour panel, or perhaps the opposite, they were actually afraid of this person so were trying to get in his good books to keep him in the school? Do there not have to be some boundaries as to what they can be involved in and what is best left to the head and the management structure of the school?

Ms Gold: The schools which have done really exciting and innovative things have not said there are limits. They have said it is about partnership and it is about negotiation and it is about gradual development, but that headteacher, in that particular school, when those children said "We want an inclusion, not an exclusion, group," at each step along the way she checked it and thought "This sounds good; let's see what we can do." That particular primary school, as part of their inclusion approach, set up a kind of mini circle time, where they invited the parent to come in, the kids talked to the parent and the child at the same time, saying "How can we support; what can we do to help your child stay in this school, because that is what we want?" It is a partnership, it is a partnership between students and teachers, and the reality is that sometimes students will have very innovative solutions, sometimes they will be incredibly conservative and very unimaginative, but with experience and with empowerment they will come up with all sorts of interesting solutions that teachers do not have time to think about, to be honest.

Q256 Stephen Williams: Have Ofsted got it right, the way they actually evaluate the teaching of citizenship or participating in citizenship in schools?

Ms Gold: Probably not yet.

Mr Wylie: They need to connect it with whatever they are doing on joint area reviews; they should not connect it simply to the institutional focus, it needs to feed across into the other forms of provision for young people in all communities. Item number four.

Q257 Stephen Williams: A final question relevant to this Committee. I wonder if you could suggest ways for young people themselves, you all have access to young people and you are acting as a filter for their views to us, is there a good way we could hear directly the voices of young people? Something which occurs to me. I went to the count in Bristol of the Youth Parliament and people actually had taken part in an election and it was a much more exciting count than anything I had ever been to myself. Might they be the right people to ask?

Ms Hunjan: In the Puttnam Commission we talked about roadshows, so actually just holding events and meetings but in different parts of the country, and there are really simple things that you can do to make it more participatory, like not have the desks and have some people actually sitting working together and some young people being prepared in advance, some young people being able to submit evidence in different ways. I know the Hansard Society does a lot of this, through HeadsUp, so there is an online forum, and they piloted a video project which was about young people giving evidence through short films, which I think would be a really exciting way of hearing about young people, but I think definitely going out to where young people are. I was chairing an event at the Power Inquiry conference on Saturday and a lot of young people stood up and said "It's really strange; it's like elected representatives don't know where to find us. They just have to go to the pub, the park, the Youth Council, the school, and they will find us and they can talk to us." It is not always about expecting young people to come into forums like this.

Q258 Mr Marsden: This is a very narrow, curriculum-based thing; do you think that the teaching of citizenship and the linkage of citizenship is going to be helped by citizenship being seen as a discrete element in the school curriculum, as opposed to being something - because we have heard this from some of our witnesses - that flows through a variety of different strands in the school?

Ms Hunjan: I think, if you want that knowledge bit, that we have been talking about a lot, then you need to have discrete lessons, where the taught bit of the citizenship curriculum can be done. I maintain my point that teachers need a lot more help with that, and that can come with Parliament, wherever, teachers need help with that, but I think it is important to have discrete lessons, as well as this whole-school approach, which looks at where citizenship can be delivered in other parts of the school environment.

Mr Mason: I would endorse Raji's view, principally because of the fact that if it is just solely on a discrete subject then we can just have the typical mentality of a citizenship lesson, even if it was a bit "Oh, we've got a practical today because we're going out, whoopy-doo; but then next week we're just going to sit and someone's going to talk to us about the status of the bill. Whoopy-doo." If this links, say, in history or chemistry - - -

Q259 Mr Marsden: We promise we will not recommend that.

Mr Mason: It is just little bits of difference, whether it is modifying language or whether it is the act, which link back to certain elements about citizenship, so they can see that it is not seen in isolation, it is part of being a member of society and being a member of the community, about vocational skills, not just academic skills, then I think it will be useful.

Q260 Mr Marsden: Through you, Chairman, I think Tom was nodding; do you want to add something?

Mr Wylie: I think colleagues have said it. I think it is the three. I have taught it myself, I have taught history on the British constitution, as it was then called. You do need the specific elements so that you can help people to be clear where the hand-holds are, a bit like the Bullock Report on English, many years ago, where every teacher is a citizenship teacher, so you do want to see its connections and, I would say, the Whig view of history, even the poetry of John Clare, etc., can we see where it connects in other subjects. If it is not then lived out in what they experience in the school, when the teaching will take it only so far, if they do not feel respected and able to participate to the different levels of their interests and ability in the school itself then people will disregard the taught curriculum, because that is not the message they are getting from the hidden curriculum.

Q261 Chairman: We are coming to the end of this session. Tom has now got a gold star for mentioning John Clare in evidence, but, you three, you are going to have this feeling of discontent when you leave this Committee, because as soon as you get out of this room you are going to say to yourself "I wish I'd told that lot x, or y." You have got a minute to do it. I will start with Jules. We have missed the point, have we; what have we missed that we should be alert to? What else should we be looking at?

Mr Mason: I do not think there is anything missed. I would just re‑emphasise, which bears upon Tom's last point, that citizenship needs to be lived. I think, from our perspective, it being seen as vocational, life skills, so that then beyond compulsory and beyond post-16 education, when they become real citizens, depending on your perspective, they can contribute to society. I think that is what citizenship education is about.

Q262 Chairman: You do not have citizenship in universities, do you?

Mr Mason: No, but of lifelong learning everyone is a part.

Q263 Chairman: Perhaps we should have?

Ms Hunjan: I think I would like to see more decision-makers and policy-makers involved in supporting the citizenship curriculum and making it more real through engaging young people in consultation, through opening up our institutions in more accessible ways for young people to be involved in them and actively to engage with young people and see them as citizens now, not citizens of the future. I would like to see the Education Unit of Parliament supporting schools more, by making it easier for them to access the information and understand what is going on here.

Ms Gold: We think that every school needs to be supported in the process of establishing an effective, bottom-up student participation infrastructure, an infrastructure that all young people now have to feed into, access and have a voice through, as opposed to it being just an elite couple of students who meet in the head's office. It is a bottom-up structure, through form councils, through class councils, and schools should have a specific part of their budget which every year can be spent on developing young people's skills in participation and leadership.

Mr Wylie: Encourage schools to have a set of standards which cover both the taught curriculum and the hidden curriculum of the school as an institution, and connect both of those to the real world and not simply the institution.

Chairman: Thank you very much for evidence. We have enjoyed it and it has been a very lively session. Thank you very, very much.