Memorandum from Chris Waller, Professional
Officer Association for Citizenship Teaching
ACT would contend that the Parliamentary Visitor
and Info Centre is an important part of improving knowledge and
understanding about political institutions and in terms of education
and Citizenship education in particular it should be a centre
for improving political literacy amongst young people.
ACT would see this as an opportunity to revise
such work for the 21st century by ensuring that the centre contains
the latest interactive resources. We would hope that you would
be in a position to run workshops on Parliament for Citizenship
Co-ordinators from schools and Citizenship PGCE students, Teach
First students etc. Indeed, all Citizenship PGCE students should
be taken round Parliament as a matter of course. From September
2006 the DfES has announced a new CPD programme for 600 teachers
this academic year. They should perhaps also be invited to the
Centre in order to improve their understanding of Parliament.
We would suggest that the visitor centre should
be a venue for Citizenship events and that NGOs involved in Citizenship
might be asked to run events there thus enabling the Centre to
come in to contact with others involved in improving political
literacy and Citizenship knowledge and understanding. Such bodies
might include the Citizenship Foundation, CSV, the LGA, the Post
16 Citizenship project at Learning Skills Network etc.
4 July 2006
| 
