Memorandum submitted by Lord Adonis, Member
of the House of Lords, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State
for Schools, Department for Education and Skills (MSO)
CITIZENSHIP
EDUCATION
Thank you for inviting me to give evidence to the
Modernisation Committee on Wednesday. Before answering your questions
on Wednesday I thought it would be helpful to update the Committee
on how far we have come in terms of supporting schools to deliver
citizenship education.
The National Curriculum and the schemes of work produced
by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) give unprecedented
emphasis to the teaching of parliament and democratic institutions.
The National Curriculum orders for Key Stage 3 (11-14 year olds)
states that pupils should be taught about:
— the electoral system and the importance
of voting.
At Key Stage 4 (14-16 year olds) pupils should
be taught about:
— the work of parliament, the government
and the courts in making and shaping the law; and
— the importance of playing an active
part in democratic and electoral processes.
The QCA schemes of work which help teachers
in the lesson planning include units on Government, elections
and voting (KS3), a citizenship and history unit on women and
voting (KS3), developing skills of democratic participation (KS3)
and how and why are laws made (KS4).
Citizenship is still a new subject having been
introduced in 2002. It is still bedding down and a great deal
of continued support is needed for teachers.
There is a requirement for all trainee teachers
to have an understanding of citizenship education and we are training
200 specialist citizenship teachers per year (800 to date). We
have introduced a short course (equivalent to half) GCSE, and
are developing a full course GCSE and an A level due to demand.
The short course is the fastest growing GCSE with 38,000 entries
last year.
In order to train and support existing teachers,
we have produced a new Continuing Professional Development handbook
"Making Sense of Citizenship" in partnership
with the Citizenship Foundation which includes specific reference
to voting and elections, for example page 145 includes a section
on how to assess pupils' understanding of voting and the electoral
system after taking part in a mock election. I am also announcing
the roll out of a teacher's CPD certificate in citizenship education
to fund 1,200 places during 2006-07 and 2007-08.
Practical skills of enquiry and engagement are
vital in building up knowledge about parliament and democracy.
Both are reflected in the National Curriculum orders and the GCSE.
Active citizenship is equally important in learning about democracy
through experience in schools and local communities. To support
this, we have funded, in partnership with the Electoral Commission,
the Hansard Society to run Mock Elections. In the most successful
mock elections to date in 2005 to coincide with the General Elections,
2,124 schools registered and over 800,000 students took part.
The Y Vote mock elections are supported by a website at www.mockelections.co.uk.
The DfES contributed over £100,000 between 2004 and 2006
financial years for Hansard to run mock elections. We also funded
Hansard to develop the "Heads-up" website through which
pupils and MPs and other politicians are encouraged to discuss
issues of public interest (www.headsup.org.uk). We contributed
over £64,000 in 2004-05 towards this.
As part of our commitment to provide actual
opportunities for young people to learn by participating in decision
making processes, we have also funded School Councils UK (SCUK)
to support the establishment of school councils. I recently launched
a pack of resources, funded by the DfES, to support effective
school councils. I am making available for members' interest my
speech at the launch of the pack (not printed). We are also funding
SCUK to develop a web-based schools councils' network to encourage
schools with active councils to share good practice and innovate.
In addition, we have agreed to fund a research project to determine
best practice in effective schools councils which will be carried
out by the Institute of Education later this year.
February 2006
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