Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
LORD ADONIS
1 MARCH 2006
Q1 Chairman: Lord Adonis, could I begin
by thanking you for coming to the Modernisation Committee and
for setting out the work that has been done so far on citizenship
as part of the National Curriculum. We are extremely grateful
to you for sparing time, not least because we anticipate you have
had one or two things to do over the past few weeks.
Lord Adonis: Like other members
of the Committee, I have been practising democracy.
Q2 Chairman: I am grateful as well for
the material that you have supplied to us, which I am sure has
been read assiduously by all of my colleagues; I will be testing
them on it later. Would you like to begin by setting out where
we are and the nature of the citizenship component of the National
Curriculum?
Lord Adonis: I should say that
the Government is very grateful for the reports of your Committee
which we have taken great heart from, and the emphasis that you
give to citizenship education in schools. Citizenship education
has only been going for three years in schools as a formal statutory
curriculum subject. There was a great debate before it was introduced
about whether it was wise to add further burdens to the statutory
curriculum and, as you will all know from your constituency affairs,
head teachers do not like the Government telling them that there
are more things that they need to do on a statutory basis. In
fact, citizenship has been remarkably warmly received as a subject
partly because people understand the importance of it and its
three key components: political literacy, community engagement
and social and moral responsibilities. They see these as important
things in light of schools as much as in the teaching that pupils
receive. They have accepted that it is important but they have
also found it a good way of engaging more widely with their local
communities. I have found in many schools I visit this has led
to a much more intensive relationship with local councillors,
with other elected representatives, with organisations like the
Hansard Society which have materials and support to offer. It
has led to a great wave of enthusiasm in an area which was, I
think, neglected too much before we introduced citizenship. But,
of course, it has been an entirely new subject from scratch. There
were no dedicated citizenship teachers until we introduced the
subject. There were no PGCE courses for the training of teachers
or materials. There are excellent organisations such as the Citizenship
Foundation that have been sending out materials for years like
the Young Citizen's Passport which, I am glad to say, when I was
reading it this morning, has a very good and largely accurate
section on Parliament except that it remarks that the powers of
the House of Lords to eject Bills are in order "to protect
against power being seized by a dictator"! There is a good
attempt there to get to grips with and to give people more information
about the essential work of Parliament. We recognise in the DfES
that we have a huge job of work to do to get citizenship mainstreamed
in schools and get a very large body of teachers who are competent
in leading work in this subject. That is why we have established
a new PGCE course and that has more than 200 students a year.
We are going to introduce nationwide a new certificate which existing
teachers will be able to take which the Government will pay for
for the next two years, that will be for 1200 teachers in citizenship.
We have worked with the PEU and the Hansard Society in areas like
mock elections where we have provided funding for schools to conduct
mock elections. We have put out schemes of work alongside the
National Curriculum. We have sponsored the development of the
half GCSE in citizenship which is now the fastest growing GCSE.
I have some papers here if members are interested in seeing them
afterwards. They give good weight to the work of Parliament itself.
I picked one up at random this morning and the whole theme in
one of the GCSE courses that is on offer in schools is "Power,
politics and Parliament" and there is a whole set of questions
in this GCSE paper starting with "What is a constituency?
Explain the difference between an MP and a government minister.
Why are high turnouts of voters desirable in elections? What is
proportional representation? Give one reason for and one reason
against changing the way MPs are elected to the House of Commons."
I expect that once they have had a visit from any member of your
Committee they would be able to give ten reasons either way. There
are good materials going out there to support the work of teachers
but we do recognise we have more to do and we are investing more
in this area in the ways I have indicated and we will welcome
the further work of your Committee in taking forward further investments.
I would just add that we would also pay careful attention to Lord
Puttnam's report[1]—the
Hansard Society report—which we regard as a valuable piece
of work. There are a number of recommendations there about the
work of the PEU and how that could interact better with schools
which, speaking personally, I strongly support. Speaking personally,
for example, I would welcome the use of the two chambers in the
recesses for school councils or the Youth Parliament. I know that
the Youth Parliament would welcome opportunities like that. My
own sense is that Parliament is not sufficiently accessible for
young people and it is not simply more organised visits—although
that is important—and expanded work that the PEU could do
that the Hansard Society recommended, but also a much greater
sense of public accessibility to representative groups of students
and young people. We have a thriving Youth Parliament; we have
very thriving school councils now. I hardly ever visit a school
now that does not have a school council which regards itself as
a kind of mini Parliament in the way they undertake their activities
and responsibilities. I think we should strongly encourage this
in our schools; I believe it will do as much as anything to boost
turnout in elections and a greater sense of political engagement.
I think in both Houses of Parliament we have a role to play here.
Q3 Chairman: Thank you; that is very
helpful. I read your speech this morning which was delivered to
Millfield School in Hackney (not printed) and I, too, have been
struck by the number of school councils, not only in secondary
schools but in primary education as well. One question we have
is how we build on that work that goes on with tremendous enthusiasm
and tremendous commitment by the people involved. Sometimes I
have a sense that the teachers themselves are anxious to take
it a stage further but perhaps lack either the training themselves
(if they are not politics graduates that is probably understandable)
and perhaps also, at the moment at any rate, lack the materials.
That is perhaps where this Committee might be able to help in
terms of making available more aspects of parliamentary life into
the classroom to allow that connection to be made between, say,
the work of the school council and the wider work of Parliament
in the community.
Lord Adonis: I think that would
be valuable. There is a good deal of material that is now made
available in the general teaching of citizenship but also in the
particular area of political literacy. I pay tribute to the work
of the Hansard Society in particular for the work it has done
in this area which has been immensely valuable and also the Citizenship
Foundation which has worked hard in this area too. It clearly
is an issue for your Committee whether the work of the PEU can
be expanded directly and of course Lord Puttnam's Committee had
a number of recommendations to make there. The only observation
I would make from ceaseless visiting of schools is that it is
impossible to over rate how important it is to the development
of citizenship as a subject that schools see their local MPs,
meet their local councillors and have a real sense of engagement
with the local political process. That is something I find MPs
and local councillors take immensely seriously and they find it
enormously encouraging. When I go to visit schools now I usually
meet the school council and it is not just for discussion about
the school (although it often is about what is going on in the
school and the education policy), they also want to ask me about
how Parliament works and they explain to me the rules governing
their school councils. Some of them have the most extraordinarily
complex electoral system to members of their school council which
would make even the liberal democrats impressed at the capacity
of very young children to understand. I also find, as always in
this game, we learn ourselves. I was sceptical in the beginning
about the concept of school councils in primary schools; I am
now completely converted to them. The idea that six, seven, eight,
nine year olds are not capable of expressing strong views in a
forum about what matters to them in their school and how things
can improve is completely wrong. In the past we have not allowed
sufficiently for organised expression amongst the pupils in schools
and I also think a tell-tale sign now is that the best head teachers
regard this as an immensely valuable tool in developing a greater
sense of responsibility and success in their school. They do not
regard it as a threat or in any way an impediment to the work
of the school. They are seeking to develop these areas and they
are latching on to citizenship as a way of doing so.
Q4 Chairman: I assume that school councils
have managed to avoid having a hereditary element so far.
Lord Adonis: I have not seen one,
but then the electoral system for the election of hereditary peers
is something which is very hard to encourage anyone else to adopt.
Q5 Ann Coffey: I think that there are
some aspects of this which are going extremely well. From my observations
going into schools I totally agree with school councils; they
are going extremely well in schools. I also think another aspect
which is going very well is the community involvement. I have
visited schools where they have had an environmental project and
the children have drawn up a list of things they wanted improving,
have engaged with the local council and things have got done.
I think that is going very well as well, together with this broader
agenda of teaching values and self-respect. I was very impressed
by the number of schools that have got involved in anti-bullying
week. I think most things are going well, but what I think is
still difficult and I am not sure quite how we get over it, is
that people still think Parliament is only about party politics
and there is a reticence of getting involved in that area by teachers.
I think that is something to do with getting involved and being
seen to be partisan; they are not sure how you teach about the
democratic process without children taking stories home and perhaps
then being seen as partisan in their politics. They tend to do
all the rest of it but actually stay out of that area and that
is difficult because that actually is the central theme that we
are trying to engage children and young people in; a great deal
of the whole process of making laws and the democratic process
is centred on Parliament and this place. I still think we have
a real problem with this curriculum in helping teachers to be
able to teach about Parliament and the process of making laws
and feeling comfortable about that and not feeling as though they
have to engage in party politics and have views about parties.
I think that is still a very serious difficulty. The other thing
I would say to you is that the Youth Parliament (which I think
is absolutely excellent) is in my view over-representative of
a particular kind of young person which tends to be the more educated,
more middle-class young people. I have a real difficulty trying
to engage young people in the areas of my constituency where children
come from very deprived background into that kind of Youth Parliament.
They are totally overwhelmed with it. Interestingly enough, a
year ago they both met in the same room and the young people who
came from the more deprived parts of my constituency were totally
overwhelmed by the Youth Parliament, by the articulateness of
the young people there. I think it is excellent but I think that
we have to reach beyond that to other young people who are disengaged
because they are the same people who are going to grow up not
to vote.
Lord Adonis: That is a very good
point and I think that is part of the reason why school councils
can play such an important role because they are so bottom up
in with class representatives and so on in all schools. On the
first point, reflecting on the experience of developing citizenship
over the last five years since we first seriously engaged on it,
what I am struck by is that the big debate when we started down
this road was fear of political indoctrination. We all remember
this; we were warned at the time and there were quite heated debates
about citizenship education being about seeking to have politically
correct views imposed on children and it could lead to an excessive
degree of party politicisation of the work of schools and so on.
That was a very great concern and I remember at the time we had
to point to the elaborate provisions of the 1996 Education Act
and the need to ensure political impartiality and balance and
so on, and the development of the Curriculum Orders in Citizenship
took account of that too. In fact, that has not proved to be an
issue at all in the development of citizenship; it has never once
been raised with me at any of the schools I have visited which
are teaching it. Teachers are well-equipped at putting opposing
points of view. Their main challenge, in my experience, is encouraging
their pupils—particularly those who come from, as it were,
less articulate backgrounds—to express strong views in the
first place. It is not an issue that this is becoming unduly politicised.
I think the fact that we have now got over that hurdle, we do
not believe that the formal teaching of political literacy in
schools need mean a politicisation of the work of schools, I think
it is now much easier for head teachers and governors who were
nervous about entering this area to give strong support to the
development of teaching. The other issue that is clearly still
a big challenge is that, despite everything I have said, we still
have only a very small group of teachers who are properly equipped
in this area; we still have fewer than a thousand trained citizenship
teachers. We are talking about 1,200 teachers whom we will be
able to pay for to take the citizenship certificate over the next
two years, but we have 4,000 secondary schools so it still means
that we will not have immediately in most secondary schools a
trained teacher. We are seeking to overcome that by the resources
that we are putting into this certificate; we are raising the
numbers who are training on the PGCE and we are making knowledge
of the citizenship curriculum a requirement for new teachers coming
through the system. However, it is going to be a few years yet
before we have a level of expertise in each school that we would
regard as satisfactory.
Q6 Mr Knight: I think the last point
you have made is very important indeed because I have always taken
the view that to ensure that young people learn a subject you
have to make it interesting. One of the problems here is, as the
school inspectors have said, that too many teachers are relying
on worksheets I suspect because they are unsure of the subject
themselves. I know when I have gone to speak in a school I usually
have the teacher come up to me afterwards and say, "Well,
that was interesting" or "I've learned something today
about how Parliament works". I think this is the key, that
teachers have to be taught this specialist area in order to make
the subject interesting for the children.
Lord Adonis: I completely agree.
We are sending out much better professional development materials
to schools, "Making Sense of Citizenship." There is
a booklet which is excellent and has some excellent case studies
of how teachers themselves generate local projects—waste
management and other issues of relevance to schools—and
we hope that will prompt teachers to think much more creatively
about how they can use the local context that is at their disposal
in developing better materials for pupils.
Q7 Ms Butler: We have to ensure that
this agenda is taught in a more creative way because if we rely
on worksheets then it will put young people off in the classroom
and it will just reinforce the vision that politics is quite dull
and boring and it is not about conflict resolution and how you
approach with a passion what you believe in. I would also like
to pursue the idea that at the end of the citizenship agenda that
it culminates in coming into Parliament and having a debate in
the chamber and then ensuring that that debate and what the young
people then pursue themselves is then carried forward into government
policy so it is not just empty rhetoric, there is a sequence of
events and young people get to discuss what they believe in passionately
and the changes that they want to see—whether it be in the
education system, whether it be in waste management, whether it
be in environment, crime, anything—we then find a way to
build that into government policy so they know they have a real
role in the political system.
Lord Adonis: I think this could
be a very valuable role for your Committee, how you promote greater
accessibility of Parliament to schools and youth groups. One of
the salient points about Lord Puttnam's report which very much
chimed with me from my recollection as a secondary school boy
coming round Parliament is that it is always very much about the
architecture—Pugin and all of that—which is wonderful,
but not much about the actual processes that take place here.
This is an efficient parliament which represents the people and
this is how it goes about doing it. I think a much stronger emphasis
on that and the work that Parliament itself does would be valuable,
as well as this extraordinary architectural wonder in which we
all work. I think that is important. In terms of engagement more
locally, there are some excellent examples and what we need is
more of them. We now have within the specialist school programme
18 schools that have developed citizenship as their main specialist
area of excellence and I would expect them to start developing
curriculum materials and approaches to teaching the subject that
will then spread out more widely across the system. For example,
Deptford Green School in south London which has an outstanding
record in this area, most of the students there do do the part
GCSE in citizenship and they do a wide range of local community
projects as part of it. Some of them I found genuinely intriguing;
a group of them did a video on sales of cigarettes and drink to
the under aged in local off licences and supermarkets. I wanted
to know what actually happened to the video after it was made,
whether this was made available to public authorities; no record
was given to me as to what happened. There were a lot of immensely
relevant and important issues to young people that were being
developed as part of the citizenship agenda and we strongly encourage
that.
Q8 Mrs May: I wanted to carry on the
theme about the teachers and the training and so forth. You made
a very valid point earlier when you said that whatever we do there
is nothing like MPs getting out there into schools and showing
accessibility and talking about what they actually do, but I am
concerned about this issue of teacher training. You talked about
the new certificate that is going to be available, but I wondered
what changes had taken place in teacher training colleges in relation
to the citizenship curriculum. Also, you spoke earlier about expanding
the work of the Parliamentary Education Unit in relation to more
schools having accessibility to Parliament but surely one of the
issues is about teachers actually being able to see what happens
and having a greater understanding of the workings of Parliament
itself.
Lord Adonis: I think those are
very valuable points. On teacher training there is now a requirement
that teachers with qualified teacher status must have knowledge
of the citizenship curriculum, but of course that will be alongside
so many other things that have to be done and I accept that that
is not always a demanding knowledge. Your second point is one
that might well be worth us exploring more because we are now
training this cadre of citizenship teachers both coming up from
the bottom through the PGCE route and those who are established
teachers taking the new certificate. I think it is a very interesting
issue—since it is a manageable number coming through at
any one time—whether we should build in an expectation that
they undertake some direct parliamentary experience as part of
that. It may be that if the PEU was equipped to do so you could
include some element in that certificate or in the PGCE in citizenship
directly related to knowledge of Parliament and having some direct
experience of it. I would be keen to explore that further; I think
that could be a valuable role.
Q9 Mrs May: One possible thought that
goes through my mind is that timing and availability is a difficult
issue, but we have the Industry and Parliament Trust, we have
the Armed Services Scheme, but if we are expecting our teachers
to be teaching children about what happens in this place and what
Members of Parliament do, maybe we should make ourselves more
available to them, to have some sort of scheme where they are
able to actually learn directly what we are doing.
Lord Adonis: I think there could
be some serious mileage in that suggestion. At the moment there
are 240 PGCE students in citizenship this year; that is less than
one per member of the House. Perhaps we should think about whether
some type of formal relationship, perhaps a mentor—I do
not know whether this might be something where I could do the
same in the House of Lords—offering each of those people
who are training to be citizenship teachers a mentor and some
direct experience of the work of Parliament. I am sure that would
have a transformative effect in their personal understanding of
Parliament and they could then engage with their students. I would
welcome thoughts from the Committee in that area and if you think
that there are steps that you can take I would be very keen to
work with the Teacher Training and Development Agency to see whether
we can implement them.
Q10 Andrew Stunell: First of all, I think
we all recognise that it is work in progress and a lot of what
you have said is very useful. Can I just comment on two aspects,
the first of which is the school councils? I think they are doing
very well in many schools. In fact, Ann and I share some schools
and councils and we have seen some of the work. I was impressed
with the secondary school where the pupils are encouraged to mark
the best and the worst lessons each week, but I do not know what
the staff room make of that. I spent an hour at a primary school
being put through the mill as to why I had not immediately banned
smoking. Sometimes these things have lives of their own which
go well beyond the normal political confines. I think they will
be good at single issues in the future. That brings me to my second
point about whether they are actually going to be good in participating
in what we may describe as mainstream democracy. I had a look
at some of the figures from the Electoral Commission and it would
seem, looking at the demographics, that probably at the last general
election about 65% of teachers voted. In other words, a third
of teachers did not vote at the last general election. That is
obviously an approximation but I think there is a lack of participation
and a lack of engagement by quite a lot of staff. It is a bit
like atheists teaching Religious Knowledge: you might get some
idea of the general concept but not very much commitment. I think
the whole teacher training and teacher involvement issue really
is important and it would be interesting to know whether your
department has any plans to accelerate what you have talked about
in the report that you have given us and also whether there are
any plans to monitor the effectiveness in terms of increased participation
rates, maybe looking at some of those exemplar places. Will that
feed through into more participation?
Lord Adonis: I think there are
a lot of important points in what you have said. One of the roles
of citizenship teachers in schools is not simply to teach their
own subject but to mainstream it in the teaching of other subjects
too. Again, from what I have seen in schools that do citizenship
well, those teachers who are properly qualified in teaching the
subject have a dramatic impact in other subjects too and in just
raising the level of awareness of citizenship amongst the staff
as much as the pupils. I think that is a valuable role. In terms
of accelerating the work, I set out things we are doing which
we are seeking to accelerate. For instance, the certificate we
have been piloting for the last year; we are now looking at a
comprehensive role out of that and in my experience there is nothing
which encourages teachers to take up these sorts of courses more
and for schools to offer them than if they know that we, in the
Department of Education, are paying for it and we have said that
we will pay for it entirely for the first two years so I would
expect those places to be taken up quite quickly. We are making
a big investment in this area too. In terms of monitoring, Ofsted
has done one report and will keep this subject under review. We
have a team in the Department headed by Jan Newton, the Chief
Executive of the Citizenship Foundation (who is sitting behind
me) who takes a keen and on-going interest in what is going on
at school level and are constantly injecting ideas and thoughts
into how we can develop Citizenship in a whole range of different
ways. However, you make a good point about the fact that you cannot
expect the pupils to be engaged in the political process if the
teachers are not either. I confess that I have not given much
thought as to what we, as a department, could do to encourage
political participation amongst teachers, but all thoughts are
gratefully received. One interesting thought that I can offer
is that about half the polling stations in the country are schools
and I have always found it odd that schools close when elections
are going on. Surely they should be open. It would be good for
the pupils. One thing that I find striking is that in other countries
you have television cameras in polling booths; it is a great sense
of a community event and a public event. In this country what
goes on inside the room is a kind of sanctum where even the scrutineers
are not allowed in. I remember when I used to be a teller outside
there was a big argument with a returning officer about where
you were allowed to stand and how close you can go to the door
to take people's polling numbers and all of that. Of course voting
itself should be secret, but the whole process is shrouded with
the closing of schools. I think it is a slightly odd thing that
an election should be regarded as an event for school holidays
with schools being closed. Perhaps we should think more creatively
about how we can engage schools themselves in the conduct of elections.
I am not sure what that might mean; I do not think I am volunteering
school pupils to be the scrutineers or that kind of thing. I think
we would need to maintain very strict ratios in the allocation
of pupils to political parties.
Q11 Mr Shepherd: Lord Adonis, you are
in a room that actually marks out the background to what we are
talking about. You will have noticed behind me the connecting
dates. My problem with this subject as constructed is the inadequacy.
I spent two days in a school in my constituency doing Key Stage
3—all the pupils of that age as they came through—and
there is no narrative as to the story of this country, the long
march, as the dates portray—1832, 1867 down to 1928—there
is no realisation that democracy was not a particular principle
of this country until developed in the 19th century. There is
no understanding as to who owns the country—you and me,
I would argue—and because of this lack of narrative which,
when I was at school these were key events in the teaching of
history, and how we have come to be what we are today. It is essential
to the understanding of what we are as citizens. One cannot demure
from anything in your letter to us, but it is this disconnection.
Unless there is a story of how every man comes to own their country
and the importance of the institutions that were formed and that
therefore helped them advance, now that has to be an excitement.
I look at schools in the United States; obviously there are formative
events similarly in their constitutional development and concept
of citizenship because I think one springs from the other, one
is defined by the other. I am posing this as a reflective point
about what I see as the great absence, the diminution of British
history as an element in the life of a school. This is the area
where one can evoke or awaken an interest in the actual things—the
building blocks—of why this is important, who we are and
where we hope to go.
Lord Adonis: I should stress that
schemes of work that the Department and Qualifications and Curriculum
Agency Authority put out do stress the importance of narrative
and seek to make the subject genuinely interesting and engaging.
I can make material available to the Committee afterwards. For
instance, one of the units in the Key Stage 3 curriculum is why
did women and some men have to struggle for the vote and what
is the point in voting today, so setting the act of voting in
the context of exactly what Mr Shepherd was mentioning, which
is the sweep of reform and the struggles of the Chartist Movement
and then the suffragettes and so on. So it is there, but at the
end of the day we are in the same situation as we are in all subjects.
We in the Department and the QCA can write these sorts of papers
until we are blue in the face, but what actually matters is the
quality of teaching and sense of excitement which is brought into
the classroom at school level. We cannot, of course, dictate that
from the centre and that is why I attach such importance to the
systematic training of citizenship teachers including, I think,
a real sense of engagement with Parliament. I remember, as somebody
who has been politically interested from an early age, actually
visiting Parliament and seeing it at work and sitting through
debates. I vividly remember sitting through a House of Lords debate
on education which Rab Butler made (one of his last great speeches)
quoting Luther. It was a great sense of the dramatic. It is those
sorts of experiences which are going to have a great effect on
young people and that is what we need to work at more, teachers
who themselves have this sense of excitement and engagement who
can then pass it to their students. In terms of the actual materials
(which I can make available) they do stress the narrative, as
indeed the Curriculum Orders do in history too (a good knowledge
of the development of modern British history), but at the end
of the day, as I say, how well it is taught depends upon the quality
and the engagement of the teachers.
Q12 Mr Shepherd: I wish you well in this
task but it seems to me that (as the teacher who stood in with
me, because I was not allowed to be loose in a classroom by myself)
so many teachers themselves are wholly unaware of this background
so this is where I think you have quite a serious difficulty because
you may give them a module which shows you all those things but
in 1832 the fact that there was no elected member for Birmingham
or Walsall or Wolverhampton, the fact that almost no-one had the
vote and the whole social march of our country was dependant upon
the enfranchisement of people. If you said to a classroom today
or teachers today, "Do you realise there was not a constituency
of Birmingham in 1832 or there was not a constituency in Wolverhampton?"
(this would actually apply to most of the country) they are actually
rather puzzled at that. They accept that everyone can go off to
vote today whether they want to or not and why was it that a hundred
thousand people marched from Wolverhampton to Birmingham to argue
for the Great Reform Bill et cetera.
Lord Adonis: I can only agree
with you and say that this is work in progress and we have further
to go. Of course the more exciting the material the better. I
have just finished reading Edward Pearce's fantastic book and
what he does brilliantly—which many academic historians
do not do—is to bring Parliament alive. His re-creation
of the debates I think is phenomenal and good teachers will have
read those sorts of books and will be able to express it in those
sorts of ways to their students. However, it does take a combination
of good materials and good teachers.
Q13 Chairman: When I have groups of students
or young people visiting, I find it hard to explain what happens
here if they do not understand that there was a time when women
or, indeed, working men did not have the vote. There was one group
who had no idea at all that there had been an English Civil War.
I accept that this is an aspect of the teaching of history but
I find it odd, I have to say, as a parent that my children at
15 and 16 spend their time learning about the history of medicine—important
though that is—or the history of the American West—important
though that might be—but do not have any sense at all of
what happened in the English Civil War. I think it is part of
that wider debate and I am not sure that that can simply be taught
as part of a citizenship course if they do not have the basic
history to go with it.
Lord Adonis: The point is of course
very well taken. There is often too much of a sense among historians
that recent history is not real history therefore you get this
disconnect between the history that they are studying and the
present. In my time as a historian at university my best history
tutor said that no historian should have any gaps between their
period and the present which I always thought was a very sound
piece of advice. Too much of the teaching of history is about
discreet modules which are too disconnected from the present time.
I do agree with that, but it is not for me to be dictating precisely
how historians are trained at university and the work of our universities
(I would get into very difficult territory there). Similarly when
it comes to the training of politics—many politics teachers
have done politics as a degree, it is a very popular degree course—I
would like to see British politics as a really strong element
in the teaching of politics courses across the country, but it
does vary. In some university politics courses, British politics
is not such a major component. These are legitimate issues for
the history profession and the political science profession themselves
to engage with and I think the stronger the emphasis your Committee
gives to them and Parliament itself, I think the stronger the
lead that will be given to the profession.
Q14 Chairman: I was thinking more about
the syllabus for GCSE than the teaching of history at university.
Lord Adonis: The issue of how
far we seek to specify precisely what must be taught is of course
a difficult one. There is a range of options within the National
Curriculum which is available at GCSE and that does include a
requirement to do some British history but how far we actually
go in specifying it is a difficult issue.
Q15 Liz Blackman: Lord Adonis, you have
mentioned several times the PEU and its potential to play even
further into teacher training, professional development and the
quality of materials in the classroom. How does the PEU relate
to other organisations which have responsibility for developing
those particular courses and those particular materials? Is there
a coherent relationship or does the PEU operate in a bit of a
silo playing into the classroom and training by a happy accident?
Lord Adonis: My understanding
is that the QCA—the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority—and
its partners have been engaged with the PEU in the development
of the materials which we put out to schools. We ourselves have
funded with the PEU, for example, the work that the Hansard Society
has done in sponsoring mock elections. There were well over 2,000
mock elections that we know about that took place in schools last
year. We provided funding, support and materials and so for those.
I think that is a very valuable role that schools can play in
engendering real political literacy. We funded that jointly with
the PEU and it was undertaken by the Hansard Society. We have
been engaged with them but we would like to see how we can engage
further and recommendations that you have to make in that area
we will look at very seriously.
Q16 Liz Blackman: Basically what you
are saying is that you do think there is further dialogue and
cooperation with the PEU and you are looking for a way forward.
Lord Adonis: Yes, definitely.
For example, taking Mrs May's comments earlier, if we were to
have some parliamentary component in the PGCE I assume that the
PEU might broker it. I think it would be very appropriate if it
did play some role like that. We would be very open to suggestions
about how the PEU could enhance this education work and we would
seek to work very closely with the PEU in doing so if that were
what you were minded to recommend.
Q17 Mr Vaizey: We talked about training
teachers; what about the training of MPs? As a new MP it strikes
me that we do not get any advice on the sort of things we should
be discussing with sixth formers and pupils when we go and visit
schools. We do not get shown the curriculum they are being taught
or anything like that and I think it would be a good idea if new
MPs were given advice and told what topics might be worth covering
and the likely level of pupils they will be talking to and what
sort of things they have recently learned. Also, there is an Armed
Forces parliamentary scheme but there is no kind of Teach First
scheme for MPs and if there could be some sort of scheme that
allows MPs to spend some time in school actually teaching that
might bring home some of the requirements.
Lord Adonis: In my experience
schools are only too delighted to engage with their MPs and of
course MPs do so, I am not sure how much we could help in the
making of contacts but if you think there is work we can do then
of course we will look at it. The point is well taken about us
providing more advice to MPs on what citizenship itself is. The
fact that you have not had anything from the Department I take
as a criticism which we should act on. I think it is absolutely
right that we should see that MPs are aware of the content of
the citizenship curriculum and the materials we are putting out
to schools and how they can help. I am always slightly wary about
being presumptuous but if you think it would be useful for us
to do this, I or Ruth Kelly will be more than delighted to write
to members (and members of my House too) to set all this out.
If you think that is something which would be useful perhaps we
might try out on the members of the Committee the sort of advice
we might give to members on how they could help in their schools
given the citizenship curriculum and the work that we are seeking
to promote in this area. We would be more than happy to do that
if it would be useful to you.
Chairman: That would be very helpful.
Q18 Mr Vaizey: We have talked about Parliament
and its role in teaching citizenship and going out to schools,
but what do local councils do? What does the Local Government
Association (LGA) do? Does it have its own council education unit,
as it were, or scheme to encourage councillors to go into schools
or to encourage school children to visit councillors and so on?
Lord Adonis: I am not aware of
the LGA having organised programmes although I will ask. It might
be good if they did do more. A lot of local councillors are school
governors and are intimately engaged in schools and I tend to
find that they are quite engaged in the work of their local schools,
but whether it could be done on a more systematic basis I think
is something well worth looking at.
Q19 Mr Vaizey: What I have decided to
do in my schools is to hold debating workshops because I think
debating is the best way to teach kids about citizenship, learning
how to marshal arguments and so on. It seems to me that all these
great debating competitions which you and I were involved in as
children have completely disappeared. There seems to be no school
debating competitions on a national basis or on a regional basis
and I wondered whether you had any thoughts on the importance
of debating as a method of teaching citizenship.
Lord Adonis: There are organisations
which are seeking to promote that. There is a very good charity
called Debate Chamber which is working with a number of London
challenge schools, these are schools which have not had a history
of having school debating societies and so on and which is seeking
to promote them. I think it has its London final because I know
I am going as one of the judges on Saturday in Mossbourne Academy
which is a new academy in part of Hackney which is a very deprived
community. They have their own debating team which I am told has
been coached properly by Debate Chamber which includes a number
of quite serious debaters in their twenties who are doing this
as a charitable activity. I am told that their team of Year 7
and 8 students is more than a match for some of the more established
school teams which are older. We would certainly seek to encourage
this and the work of organisations like Debate Chamber may be
valuable. Debating is not part of the citizenship curriculum as
such. I had not considered whether it should be; I think that
is an issue that is worth considering. Certainly one of the things
that MPs visiting schools would be able to encourage strongly
since they have such a good personal knowledge in this area is
how schools might get debating societies going and the sorts of
people they might invite and so on. The thing that probably has
more impact on this than anything is role models. If schools have
a regular programme of visitors who stimulate debates in the school
then I think that, as much as anything, will get these sorts of
activities going.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: I have a number
of short questions to the Minister, the first following up Richard
Shepherd. Lord Adonis, would you not agree that history/experience
is the best teacher in life and therefore a greater emphasis on
the constitutional history of this country—not just going
back to the Chartists or the suffragettes but well beyond that
and back to Magna Carta and the divine right of kings replaced
by the power of the barons, replaced by the power of the important
people in the countryside and in the cities, bringing us up to
date to the power of the people—associated with the characters
and the personalities that were involved in these changes could
well excite young people to have a much greater interest in how
our country was formed and how we come to what we are today? We
have stressed in this question time with you the role of teachers;
not once has anyone mentioned the role of parents. Surely in educating
their children parents have very considerable responsibility in
respect of citizenship, and is it not a sad reflection that perhaps
greater emphasis is not sought to be imposed upon parents and
the role that they can play along with teachers? You talk about
educating people into Parliament, one of the great problems is
that schools in the Greater London area and in London can come
to Parliament very easily, but schools from much further afield
cannot, not least because of the very heavy costs of coming to
London. If you want more schools to visit the House are you going
to make more money available from the centre to enable them to
do it? Can I talk about political engagement and be controversial
here? One of my views is that people are not taking much interest
in politics because they do not believe it is worth their while
doing so because politicians are now in the power of their parties
rather than elected to represent the people that they are elected
to represent in this place. We have had plenty of examples in
respect of your own government; there are many people who do not
like what you are doing in respect of the Education Bill but they
have been whipped into place. I have listened for three quarters
of an hour to what has been going on and I think we are missing
the point. It is the political parties that are ruining the politics
of this country, not Parliament or the people's ignorance of Parliament.
I think there is a lot of interest in young people but they look
to the politicians to be open, honourable and transparent and
to do what they believe to be right rather than necessarily what
their party tells them to do. Can I also pick up the point of
Mr Vaizey? He talked about you producing some material and help
to educate Members of Parliament. I find that quite extraordinary.
Does that not indicate that more and more Members of Parliament
are coming into Parliament with a lack of experience and knowledge
of real life?
Mr Vaizey: That was not my point; that
is not what I said.
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