Examination of Witness (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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