Examination of Witnesses (Questions 42-59)
MR KEITH
AJEGBO AND
MR JOHN
CLARKE
24 OCTOBER 2005
Q42 Chairman: Keith and John, you have
been listening to Sir Bernard, who is an inspiration of this whole
area of activity in schools, and also, of course, Ofsted who have
the role of monitoring the quality of what goes on in schools.
You are both at the sharp end in different ways. We now want to
talk about how it feels to you in a real school and in a real
education authority. Is there anything you, Keith, would like
to say about what you have just heard to get us started or how
you feel this subject is developing in schools, and John similarly?
Mr Ajegbo: We basically started
from Sir Bernard Crick's report. We saw the report and at the
time we were trying to consider what sort of specialist school
we should be. Citizenship was not a specialist subject at the
time, but as an inner city school—50% free-school meals,
Deptford—we wanted something which we felt would
touch as many pupils as possible. Obviously science and the other
subjects are very important, but at the time we did not feel that
would touch all the pupils. Having read the report we felt it
touched on things about an inner city school which were important
to change. That is the reason why citizenship became important
to us.
Mr Clarke: I have a couple of
reflections on what I have heard this afternoon. I think there
is a difference between citizenship as a subject and children
and young people becoming effective citizens. I think, listening
to the discussion over the last hour, for me the essential word
which people have been talking about is participation, which is
fundamentally an issue of the whole school and it is not an issue
just for citizenship lessons. Children going to a citizenship
lesson may experience participatory experience but if they then
go to science or physical education or history or mathematics
straight afterwards and they are not participating in those lessons
in the way in which people would define participation, they are
not experiencing citizenship, even though they may have had a
perfectly acceptable citizenship lesson. I think we are talking
here about the essence of schools, not just about a subject on
the curriculum.
Q43 Chairman: A point well made.
What have you seen in terms of the maturation of the subject over
the couple of years which you have had to judge this? Is that
whole school ethos developing in the majority of schools in Hampshire?
Mr Clarke: There are 534 schools,
it is hugely variable. I would say it is happening effectively
in a small number of secondary schools, averagely in a much larger
number of secondary schools and not so well in a few secondary
schools. I think the place where huge steps forward have been
taking place in Hampshire has been in primary schools where admittedly
it is easier for a number of reasons which I can go into. I think
the organisation of secondary schools makes the whole school approach
to participation of citizenship more difficult. Certainly in the
last few years—because of the work we have been engaged
in which is about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child—we
have seen a phenomenal difference in some primary schools that
have taken that work seriously.
Q44 Chairman: Earlier this year this
Committee published a report on education outside the classroom.
In that case we found that the division was very patchy: where
it was done well, it was done very well indeed, and in many areas
where it was done not very well, the added value of that learning
experience was very little, even negative. Is it a similar pattern
or would you say outer school education in a place like Hampshire
is a lot more developed and better than citizenship? I know that
may be difficult to compare but can you try?
Mr Clarke: I will preface it by saying
it is difficult to comment on accurately because the focus of
most of the work—my background is in school improvement—people
involved in school improvement is in value added, English, mathematics
and science and the amount of resource we can get to put into
looking at other things is small. I cannot give you an accurate
response to that. What I would say is that where we are able to
focus, we would be focusing on citizenship because we are interested
in an effective citizenry.
Q45 Chairman: You would not disagree
with the conclusions of the report that good out-of-school education
improves the student experience dramatically?
Mr Clarke: Not at all, absolutely.
Q46 Chairman: Keith, does your out-of-school
education bear any similarity to what you are doing in terms of
the quality of it?
Mr Ajegbo: What we are looking
at is in terms of children participating in school. I think out-of-school
education, where children are doing things that are happening
outside the curriculum alongside citizenship where they are participating
in lessons, is all about developing the school ethos. Our view
was that it was about children taking some more responsibility
and having a greater sense of independence about their learning
which was going to lead to raising achievement and also about
giving pupils a voice. If you are giving pupils a voice a bit
about of what is happening in the school, about the sorts of activities
they can do out of school and in the end a voice in how their
lessons might operate, then you might have more of a chance of
them owning their education. Just from our context—I am
not trying to make generalisations—we felt that our pupils
had a sense of powerlessness, and that might be living in a fairly
difficult inner city area, you feel powerless, and you have got
to give pupils a voice and give them some choice and some power,
and citizenship was the vehicle to give them that voice. Also,
you can give them a voice about what happens after school. We
have developed a number of activities, like a recycling club,
a magazine which they publish and a film club, which have come
out of activities that they particularly wanted to do and have
come through citizenship lessons.
Q47 Chairman: Will the extended school
be an interesting opportunity for this kind of development?
Mr Ajegbo: Yes. We are in a full
service extended school. With the full service extended school
it has given us some opportunities. For instance, we had some
Year 10 students who taught basic IT skills to parents and, therefore,
that was a real practical opportunity (a) to get parents into
the school and (b) for the Year 10 pupils to develop their expertise.
Those sorts of opportunities to get parents and children learning
together which, again, can come through citizenship activities,
I think are a powerful way forward. I am not saying they happen
widely, but little pockets of those things certainly help inner
city schools to move away from the plateaus which they can sometimes
reach in terms of achievement.
Q48 Mr Marsden: Perhaps I can ask
you both what you think of the current policy design of the curriculum?
Obviously you have heard us posing some questions about content
earlier on. Keith, perhaps you would like to start on this. Do
you think the basic presumptions which underlie the current policy
on citizenship education are the right ones or are there things,
from your experience taking this through, which need to be altered
in the basic framework?
Mr Ajegbo: In terms of the basic
framework we have played around with it quite a lot, and I am
taking what Sir Bernard was saying in terms of it being a guideline
to what you can do. The issues we have taken out of citizenship
are, one, this sense of a pupil voice and, two, the sense that
everything they do in citizenship lessons leads to some action
so it gives pupils some sense of agency. In the lower school all
the things we have done have led to an actual pupil outcome. These
have been about group work and they have been about participation,
and those have been the main strands of citizenship which we have
taken forward. We have taken that forward through the school into
the GCSE short course. I am not a citizenship teacher, but our
citizenship teachers had some voice in designing it, so a lot
of the work they do as part of that short course is practical
work looking at things in the community and then presenting that
work back to MPs—Joan Ruddock has been in the school a lot—back
to councillors, back to the police and back to local authority
officers. Again, they are making that voice heard. Citizenship
has been about active participation.
Q49 Mr Marsden: John, obviously you
are looking at it from a broader perspective in terms of a range
of schools in Hampshire which obviously will have different abilities
and different intents. What is your take on this? Is it a straitjacket?
Is it so loose and so amorphous or what?
Mr Clarke: I think the design
is fine. The difficulty in schools is understanding how to get
children and young people properly participating. Keith's school
is clearly an example where it happens, but it does not happen
everywhere. I think all the drivers are there. Schools have yet
to understand the full impact of our Children Act of last year
and the implication for schools to be more participative in their
approaches with children and young people. There is Article 12
of the Convention on the Rights of a Child and there is assessment
for learning. All of those things are in place, it is a question
of whether or not schools are understanding that this all pushes
them in a particular direction which is about finding ways to
hear the pupil voice and I think that is very variable.
Q50 Mr Marsden: There was some talk
earlier on about community cohesion and we have talked around
these subjects. I want to talk a little bit more bluntly and forcefully.
Since the bombings of 7 July in London and everything which has
gone on in terms of public debate and public discussion about
multiculturalism and that since then indeed, as the Chairman said
at the beginning of the meeting, leading up to the events in Birmingham
over the weekend—this puts the discussion of the importance
of citizenship and the importance of us all working and living
together in a much sharper context. Do you think the debate which
has been going on since 7 July in this country has implications
for the way, for example, you would teach your citizenship curriculum
in your schools?
Mr Clarke: It is a very difficult
question, is it not, and this is not a sidestep to it. The work
we have been doing in primary schools in Hampshire has, as I have
said, as its central place the UN Convention on the Rights of
a Child. In a sense that represents an "Authority"—with
a capital A—which lies outside the school to which both
adults and children can appeal. Nothing in that Convention offends
against—as far as I am aware—the precepts of any world
faith, but it is not of itself a faith. It allows schools which
are not faith schools to look outside schools for something that,
if you like, can take away the degree of moral relativism which
I think has existed in English education at least since the 1950s
and early 1960s. I think that is the power. In Hampshire we would
want to encourage more schools to look at that in terms of an
agreed set of moral principles to which everybody in the school
community can subscribe, irrespective of faith or background.
Q51 Mr Marsden: Do you think the
fact—if I am wrong, please, correct me—that much of
Hampshire is not currently ethnically diverse makes that task
of addressing these issues of the relationship between faiths
and multiculturalism easier or does it make it harder on what
you are trying to do in the citizenship curriculum?
Mr Clarke: It probably makes it
easier, but 4.7% of our school population are from minority ethnic
backgrounds. We have got 77 different languages spoken in Hampshire
schools, but may only have two children in any one school, but
for those two children it is important.
Mr Ajegbo: In a school which has
70% of the children from ethnic minority backgrounds, and has
had for a long time, the whole issue of multiculturalism is central
to the very essence of the school, it could not exist if we did
not discuss those things. We felt that an equal opportunities
policy and a policy about inclusion in the school was a central
tenor of how we operate. What citizenship has added to that is
that citizenship teachers—and we have trained citizenship
teachers—and teachers who have led other citizenship teachers
across the country are able to debate controversial issues and
court controversial issues within lessons and are able to deal
with issues. Issues around the Iraq war, gun culture, the bombings
which happened in London are a natural part of citizenship lessons.
Citizenship teachers will stop—which is also the flexibility
that citizenship has which perhaps other subjects do not always
have—their scheme of work if a particular issue comes up
in order to discuss it, so it then becomes part of the fabric
of discussion in the school and that has been successful. If people
are talking about things it is far better than if they are not.
Q52 Mr Marsden: There is another
aspect which we touched briefly on but I want to explore a little
bit more, specifically with you, Keith: I am aware of the fact
that Goldsmiths College has been doing one or two very innovative
things with local schools in the Deptford area—I do not
know whether yours is one of them—particularly in terms
of primary schools and in terms of encouraging local children
to find out about the history and the background of their areas
through census material and, indeed, to look at the way in which
the composition of that community has changed over time. Do you
think there is more of a role for universities in particular to
work with local schools in terms of developing citizenship initiatives?
Mr Ajegbo: Yes, I think that is
true. We work very closely with Goldsmiths College and a number
of our teachers are Goldsmiths trained. We are a training school
working with Goldsmiths. We have not done that specific work with
Goldsmiths but, yes, I would think that is the case.
Q53 Mr Marsden: John, I want to put
this question into a sharp focus of practicalities. At the moment
we are in the middle of what is called "Black History Month".
There is a very strong focus across the educational areas of exhibitions
and discussions, et cetera, underlining the role of black people
in English and British history. Would that sort of thing have
the flexibility to be dealt with in your programmes at Hampshire
schools in the way that Keith has indicated he would be able to
accommodate things which are going on at the same time in his?
Mr Clarke: Yes, but I doubt it
would be done within the context of citizenship; it would certainly
be done in the context of history. It happens that there is a
very strong cadre of history heads of department in Hampshire
secondary schools.
Q54 Mr Marsden: Why would it not
be done—not in a sort of narrow "these are the facts
about black history"—given that it is designed to promote
the fact that black people's involvement in Britain's heritage
and history is far more significant than perhaps is sometimes
given credit?
Mr Clarke: It could be done equally
in history lessons as in citizenship lessons, could it not, with
the same thrust?
Q55 Jeff Ennis: Earlier with Sir
Bernard I pushed him on the issues of school councils in the UK
Youth Parliament playing part of a role as a delivery mechanism
for delivering the citizenship agenda in both secondary and primary
schools. Would you say those two situations are an integral part
of a successful delivery model?
Mr Ajegbo: In terms of school
councils?
Q56 Jeff Ennis: Yes.
Mr Ajegbo: I would say in terms
of our citizenship agenda the school council has been really important
to it. Lots of schools have got good school councils, but we determined
that was an important bit of giving pupils a voice and, therefore,
we gave teachers non-contact time to work with the school council
to ensure that it ran properly. We then determined that they would
meet on a regular basis with the senior management team and they
would also meet with the governors on a regular basis.
Q57 Jeff Ennis: Do you have representation
on the governing body, Keith?
Mr Ajegbo: Yes, they also come
to one of the governing body meetings each term. They are not
actually governors, but they always come to one of the three.
Because we were so determined that the school council needed to
have outcomes—so if pupils are going to have power they
have got to see the results of that power—we were determined
that things which they suggested we would debate and changes would
be made. We made some changes to the uniform, we made some improvements
to the toilets we talked about, with all of these things there
was evidence of change. The most important part of the child's
day, in a sense, is the teaching, the lessons they are in. We
have involved the school council in a research project in Bedford
called "Students as Researchers", where you train some
of them to go into lessons—and they go into lessons only
with teachers who would want that to happen—and discuss
with the teachers the nature of the lesson. They might talk about
behaviour, they might talk about whether the lesson was fun, and
that means they are then having some voice in the way in which
they are taught. The school council has been a real engine for
us.
Q58 Jeff Ennis: John, do you want
to cover the primary school perspective on school councils?
Mr Clarke: I think school councils
are essential but by no means sufficient. There is almost a bible,
on participation now, a publication called, Hear by Right,
which talks about a graduated approach to participation where
consultation is at the bottom followed by representation and ends
up at the top level in initiation. I think in our best primary
schools in Hampshire we would see examples of pupils, sometimes
quite young, initiating things in schools. I think school's councils
are at the level of representation in most schools at the moment.
Q59 Jeff Ennis: Is there a role for
the citizenship agenda to promote the relationship between school
pyramids with the secondary school into primary school cohorts,
et cetera? I know for an inner London school obviously you do
not have quite clearly defined pyramids, Keith, as they do in
Hampshire, for example. Is there a role for the Citizenship Agenda
to promote good practice both at primary and secondary level at
the same time?
Mr Clarke: It is probably our
major issue in Hampshire. You can imagine the situation of children
in Year 6 being used to dialogue negotiation and seeking consensus
between each other and with teachers, and they arrive at a secondary
school which is not quite so sympathetic to those kinds of things
happening in classrooms or some of the teachers in Year 7 might
be, but other teachers not in Year 7 might not. We think that
all the good work which has been done in primary schools probably
disappears by about the November of Year 7 because of the issues
about culture sometimes but huge issues with organisations, which
is why I am interested in listening to Keith's perspective.
Mr Ajegbo: I agree with that in
terms of what happens in secondary school. I think lots of primary
children will make that evident eventually. We have become a specialist
school with English as our main subject, but citizenship is one
of our subjects. One bit of work we are doing as a specialist
school is to work with primary schools—our school council
working with primary school school's councils—in order to
see if we can address some of the issues that primary school children
bring into secondary school.
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