Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 264-279)

MR SIMON GOULDEN, DR MOHAMMED MUKADAM, MR NICK MCKEMEY AND MS OONA STANNARD

22 MAY 2006

  Q264 Chairman: Can I welcome Nick McKemey, Oona Stannard, Simon Goulden and Dr Mohammad Mukadam to our proceedings and say again that we always are very grateful when people give their time to come in front of our Committee. Of course, we know that we can make you come if you did not want to but it is very nice when witnesses eagerly attend, so thanks very much for your attendance. We are something like halfway into our inquiry into citizenship education and we are getting ourselves into some very interesting territory. Some of the questions are quite philosophic, spiritual, whatever, but they are fascinating. Some of the evidence that your organisations have given us today has been very interesting and some very challenging. I intend to start these proceedings by giving each of the witnesses a chance to make a very short introduction, not to repeat their CV but to say something to the Committee to get the discussion moving.

  Mr McKemey: My own reflection is that this was a very difficult subject to get a grip on. I have attempted to do some sort of survey of what is going on in Church of England schools and alongside that I have looked at what we have in terms of some kind of emerging policy on citizenship and so I may refer to the two speeches by the Archbishop of Canterbury made in the last three years, both of which have some pointers to and indications of what could be surmised as the Church of England stance on this, but I say that with some hesitancy.

  Q265  Chairman: Why do you say it with some hesitancy?

  Mr McKemey: Because it is very difficult to get a complete picture. As an education provider we probably have the most diverse run of schools in the whole faith provision, partly because we have voluntary foundation schools and now academies and we also have voluntary aided schools and those schools very broadly have somewhat different types of character and they certainly have different types of governance, so there are differences there. If you then apply the broad range of churchmanship across Church of England schools and the degree to which schools adhere to some form of distinctive Christian character you have a very wide range. Then again, if you add the populations within the schools, we have schools which are 100% UK white to schools that are well over 90% of Asian and Muslim origin. If you look at that it is very diverse; hence I hesitate to come out with a simple picture of a Church of England school.

  Q266  Chairman: There is no simple picture.

  Mr McKemey: There is no simple picture but a very complex one.

  Ms Stannard: I too have been talking to various heads and inviting schools to comment and advise me in advance of today. By way of introduction all that I would want to say is that I have been strongly reminded by those to whom I have spoken that being a good Catholic involves being a good citizen and the notion of citizenship as service is something which is held dear in the schools. When people have discussed that with me they have also been very keen to remind me, as if I did not know already, that being a Catholic school does not mean that it is populated entirely by Catholic pupils. There is a feeling that the sense of citizenship as service is something that they are practising throughout the school, whatever the range of pupils, and that it is built on the Christian values of the school.

  Mr Goulden: We clearly all have been doing our homework. I too have been contacting Jewish schools and find that the whole subject of citizenship is one that is very difficult to decouple from the very life of the school itself. Clearly, having heard my two colleagues on my right and, I would guess, my colleague on my left, the idea of a faith community not being imbued with ideas of citizenship and everything that brings with it is something I find very difficult to decouple. Judaism believes that education is the process of becoming a citizen, becoming articulate in the law, in collective responsibility, responsibility for the world around us, and so to have citizenship as a discrete and separate subject is one that has been quite challenging for the Jewish community and its schools. We have very much built it into religious education because religious education and religion imbues our lives and that focuses on citizenship subjects. It has been an interesting bit of research and clearly one where there is a lot of work going on but I would be interested to hear what others have to say.

  Q267  Chairman: Are you saying that the problem is very different if you are in a non-faith school, that the question of citizenship is quite different if you step outside the faith school sector, that you need citizenship there because there is not a religious core, a spiritual core, that is already part of making people aware of the need for citizenship?

  Mr Goulden: I cannot, of course, speak for the non-faith school community because that is not one that I am over-familiar with, but I certainly do know in the Jewish community that our faith drives our view of citizenship and the demands of the faith and of citizenship do not seem to be at odds at all, quite the contrary. Exactly what goes on in the rest of the state sector, because the vast majority of our schools, of course, are voluntary aided schools, I am afraid I am not really qualified to answer.

  Dr Mukadam: The Association of Muslim Schools UK has some 125 mostly independent Muslim schools up and down the country. Citizenship is something which is not new for many of our schools because from an Islamic point of view a good citizen is a good Muslim, a universal citizen. Of course, there are many challenges for us in schools. Some of them have just started, like lack of resources, lack of training, trying to get to grips with many other things associated with running schools, but on the whole every school that I have visited or spoken to warmly welcomes this debate and is engaged actively in teaching young people citizenship. Many are engaged in looking at different methodologies because of the diversity within the Muslim communities. Some take a traditional role and teach it as a separate subject, try to Islamicise it; others will take a different approach and integrate it throughout the curriculum. There is a variety of approaches but in essence it is a debate that is welcomed in Muslim schools in order to face challenges and see how we can continue to improve our teachings to churn out better educated British citizens.

  Q268  Mrs Dorries: All of you have demonstrated that citizenship is something which is imbued in the day-to-day life of your schools as part of the faith which is what drives your schools. The Chairman raised an important question about whether you think it does not happen outside. Do you think that you need citizenship as a subject within your schools and, as an add-on to that, do you think that if you do not other schools do?

  Dr Mukadam: I suppose a properly run Islamic school would not require a citizenship programme at all because within its philosophy, its teachings and its holistic approach is what I would call the effective domain which seeks to turn young people into good human beings with universal values. A good Muslim should really be a good universal citizen no matter which country he lives in. In that respect, if you analyse what citizenship looks for and you look at the ethos and the effective domain that exists within Islamic schools you will find they are in parallel and in some cases they go well above what is required in the citizenship programme. This addresses not only the cognitive domain but also the effective domain in making sure that those values are understood and internalised. Yes, in one sense, if the citizenship programme did not exist we would have no problem in churning out good, well-rounded British citizens.

  Ms Stannard: It would be disingenuous to say that when citizenship came on stream under that name I did not hear complaints from Catholic schools who were saying to me, "We are doing this anyway. Why do we have to jump through these hoops?", and there was great concern about trying to find the time in an overcrowded curriculum. That said, having moved on and with schools having more experience now of delivering citizenship in terms of present expectations, there is a much more positive response. Many schools say, "We enjoy what it has made us think about and focus upon and many of the activities and so on that we have planned and got involved in in the name of citizenship", and they say that whilst still moaning about curriculum pressures and the pressure of finding the time. Typically there will be citizenship occurring through the medium of religious education but also in PSHE and other subjects and by other strategies as well.

  Q269  Mrs Dorries: We have PSHE, we have English, we have history, we have religious education. Why then do we need citizenship as well? How come the teachers are complaining about the additional curriculum pressure? Why can they not teach what they are teaching as citizenship through those routes or channels? Why do they have to have it isolated into a different heading or subject?

  Mr McKemey: One of the difficulties we had was getting a comprehensive picture and maybe that is what we are going to embark on now. A head teacher rang me up the other day and made a very forceful statement for delivering citizenship across the whole curriculum within a school that has a distinctive Christian character, and he talked about worship right through to PE, so it was through the whole thing and it was really about identifying those strands. Most of the head teachers that I have spoken to and most of the schools that I visit approach it in that way and that is when it seems to work best. One of the problems with PSHE was when it got detached and became a thing in itself. Years ago as an Ofsted inspector I remember inspecting some pretty dreadful PSHE lessons, and one of the things that we are concerned about, as with our Catholic colleagues, is that the thing could be counterproductive if it is delivered in the wrong way. Certainly I think we would feel that it would not only be embedded in the Christian dimension of the school but also through the whole curriculum as a holistic approach.

  Q270  Mrs Dorries: Citizenship seems to be the essence of what you do in your schools anyway as faith schools. It seems to have taken the essence of what you teach through every lesson every day and crystallised it into a subject with "citizenship" above it. Do you think it is the Government's place to do that, to tell you to take out the best of what you will teach anyway and to put it into a new subject and define it?

  Mr Goulden: I think it would be disingenuous of us to suggest how the Government should focus the National Curriculum for the future, or even the present, but it does seem, certainly from my point of view, that we have tried to find a subject heading for something which, certainly for a faith school, is the warp and the weft of everything we do. I was listening just now to what Oona said and could not help but feel that she could have translated that exactly into what our schools are doing and have been doing, and I assume I speak for my other colleagues as well. This is not difficult for a faith school to do. It just means that we have to re-focus and re-compartmentalise the work we do so that it fits nicely into the citizenship curriculum and the curriculum headings and outcomes et cetera, but it is not new territory for us. I think it is new territory for a number of non-faith schools, or rather state schools. I think we can get an idea of the dimension of that if you try and see how many colleges and universities run specific PGCE courses in citizenship. There are fewer than a dozen in the country and many of those do that as part of citizenship and history, citizenship and literacy or citizenship and English. It strikes me that the non-faith schools system might be needing to catch up with where we as faith schools have had little difficulty in understanding citizenship for many decades.

  Q271  Mrs Dorries: This might be an unfair question to ask people who are already familiar with the concept of citizenship through what you do on a day-to-day basis but, given that we have so many coasting schools in the UK and schools where we have—and I cannot remember the statistic; I have not brought it with me—is it one in six children still not reaching the right literacy levels by the time they leave school, do you not think that the Government should be concentrating on the three Rs, as it were, the basic education, and leaving citizenship to history and PSHE and religion and not taking curriculum time to add another subject on?

  Ms Stannard: First, could I say that I think you can deliver citizenship education as something discrete or across the curriculum or, when done best, as a combination of both. I take your point about standards and I am sure we all feel that those are critically important, but citizenship education done well offers a good medium in which to be developing work on those standards. Some of the activities in which children and young people have become involved as a result of citizenship are quite motivating, they give the pupils work where they are having to write, having to be numerate, having to undertake pieces of analysis and so on, which arguably you could say help to develop those core skills. Another benefit of citizenship education done well is the building of the self-esteem of the pupils. What some of them are achieving and experiencing is very rewarding for them. In a sense I might even be tempted to argue that having created something with a label called citizenship, even though we believe we can do it very well without that label, does also mean that schools are put on their mettle to check what they are doing in citizenship and it has stimulated innovation. For example, in our diocese of Brentwood the Bishop has initiated annual pupil citizenship awards which are given out in a big ceremony within the cathedral. The pupils are very proud of them, as are the parents. They are very keenly reported upon and sought. I think there are all sorts of additional benefits that can come from citizenship and I do feel very keenly about pressures on the curriculum and the timetable for teachers but I think there is a balancing act that can be done.

  Mr McKemey: In common with my colleagues we have schools that are serving communities in which the children presenting at the reception stage have barely any social skills at all. If we see citizenship as having an impact on the development of, if you like, socialisation of children, the needs for these children are particularly acute. I was in one of our secondary schools recently which is in fact serving the population of two previous failed schools and the issues are very acute. The parental generation is the one that was failed and their model of schools and their attitude to education is extremely negative, so the school is in a sense trying to educate two generations at once and the children are coming in, as I say, with virtually no social skills. A good example is that their model of dealing with problems is anger or violence and so on, so I think that there are some real issues. At that level that socialisation has to be embedded in what the school does, let alone what its values are and what it stands for. I think there are some acute needs for this. Coming back to whether the Government should have a programme for this, there clearly are needs in those kinds of circumstances.

  Q272  Jeff Ennis: I would like to follow the line of questioning that Nadine has been pursuing in response to an earlier reply you gave, Oona. Do you think one of the reasons why the Government have pushed the citizenship agenda, if you like, is that they feel it may be in danger of being part of the implied curriculum in certain schools, and I am not singling out faith schools when I say this, rather than the actual curriculum which they obviously want to see happening across every school, not just the faith schools?

  Ms Stannard: Can I just check that I have understood your question correctly? You are wondering if my view is that it being overt in the curriculum is to ensure that it happens and it happens well?

  Q273  Jeff Ennis: Yes, because in any school curriculum you have the implied curriculum, which teachers are supposed to teach, and then you have the actual curriculum which they end up teaching. Quite often there is a disparity between the two and I am just wondering if education for citizenship can fall into that disparate sort of situation on occasion.

  Ms Stannard: I am sure that it could. Every school is different, every school approaches what it has to do differently and with different interests and particular enthusiasms. I think having citizenship as something named and looked at ensures that those running the school undertake the review and the evaluation of citizenship, but I would also agree with you entirely, if I have inferred correctly, that citizenship is not something that is only taught but is also acted and is present in very many of the extra-curricular activities that I see going on, for instance, in older students participating in justice and peace groups in our schools, running a Fair Trade shop, Fair Trade cafés, all that sort of thing.

  Q274  Jeff Ennis: I have a supplementary question to an earlier response from Nick McKemey in terms of the fact that it appears to me that education for citizenship can be used as a very positive tool in promoting behaviour management across the whole spectrum of all schools, Nick, and I wonder if you agree with that philosophy.

  Mr McKemey: Yes, I do. That picks up the comment Oona made a minute or two ago, that if the school is not simply focused on the hard academic curriculum but also on developing positive attitudes to learning and raising self-esteem and that sort of capital which you need in order to develop and proceed to greater achievement, then yes, I do see that as a coherent approach.

  Q275 Jeff Ennis: I wonder if Simon or Mohammed have any views about either of the questions I have put to the other two witnesses?

  Mr Goulden: One of the difficulties I see is that citizenship should be for everybody a way of life. That is what it should all be. Clearly, in a religious school or a school of a religious nature, that religious life is a way of life as well. For the religious school the two are perfectly matched. I do not know whether the Government decided to put citizenship in the curriculum because it is not a way of life, sadly, any more for a percentage—whether the vast percentage or not I have no idea—of the British population. I do see that there is this tripartite compact of the school, the community (for me the faith community) and the home, and you cannot leave the home out. We know that a triangle is the strongest structure possible and if you have a strong triangle then almost nothing can destroy it. My concern is that somewhere in our recent past, I would imagine, the concept of citizenship for the majority of people in the community has become far more Putnam's Bowling Alone syndrome and ideas of citizenship have tended to disappear with the "me" generation: "I want it all and I want it now". I think a faith grounding goes some way to redress that balance. I do not know, I genuinely do not know, how that plays out in a non-faith environment.

  Dr Mukadam: I would like to try and separate two issues here. One is, I would say, the values and self-esteem and things associated with those in faith schools that we find are done effectively through religious education, collective worship, et cetera. Where I do find citizenship really useful is when it acts as a conduit for debate and allows young people to have discussions about human rights, for example, and the sharia, what sorts of differences there are and how does a Muslim in a western country look at and discuss those differences and so forth. There is also democracy. If you give year 7s or Key Stage 3 kids a chance to play, for example, the Prime Minister it is a wonderful inspiration for them. I think it is a very useful subject in which to develop attitudes, skills and other things associated with democracy so that they understand it and have an opportunity to discuss their own faith perspectives within that framework. It would be right to say that the core values which make a good global citizen in our opinion are formed effectively within the religious domain of the school's life.

  Q276  Jeff Ennis: What degree of flexibility should schools and other institutions be allowed when it comes to providing citizenship education for pupils in their care? Are there things which categorically should be left out and things which should definitely be included within the citizenship curriculum of a school?

  Ms Stannard: Could I submit a dissertation to you on that in three years' time please? I really think it is so profound and important a question that I just could not do it justice off the cuff like that; forgive me.

  Q277  Jeff Ennis: That is very honest of you. I can tell you are a Catholic. Can you give me one or two issues that you think definitely ought to be in? What are the main issues that should be in the citizenship curriculum and what are those that definitely should not be touched?

  Ms Stannard: I certainly would include, for instance, the importance of democracy, the importance of valuing each person equally, and for me, of course, I would put that as the dignity of the human being, seeing Christ in everyone you encounter and what that demands in terms of how you treat every individual, and from there what that should mean in terms of the structures of your life and the way you live your life and that life of service to others. It is harder to say what should not be in, I am afraid.

  Q278  Jeff Ennis: Exactly!

  Mr McKemey: Can I approach that in a slightly different way? When you look at the national curriculum remit for citizenship it is relatively comprehensive or potentially comprehensive. The thing that would concern me is, if you like, the quality and depth of the provision. An area that we are very interested in and which Archbishop Rowan reflected on in his speech in March, Faith in the Future, was in our case the way a faith school can engage with those of other faiths and no faith as well as their own faith, and how that relationship can be enriched and developed. This goes way beyond what he calls passive tolerance. It is a real engagement. One of the values that we have heard expressed that a faith school might have is spiritual security and that encompasses the ability for children to be able to develop and profess belief or no belief in in the complete security of not being bullied, put down or undermined by other people. We think there are some key issues there. I have to say that when you take the National Curriculum and suggested programmes of work and all the rest of it they do not really start to make inroads into that process. I think there are some dangers in a simplistic approach to tolerance because it fails to understand the range of different values, approaches and so on that people bring to their thought, belief, philosophic processes or none. I think probably the biggest challenge we are facing in our education is with those who have not got the beginnings of any kind of social or moral code with which to deal with life, whether that is agnostic or from a faith. That is the key issue and too many things are being ring-fenced off into tolerance or finding out what the superficial features are of this or that. That is why I worry. Rather than leave something out I think it is more about the quality of what you do.

  Mr Goulden: In the Jewish community we are a little concerned about the use of the word "tolerance". Somebody once said that you tolerate toothache but it is respect for all people that Judaism teaches and that is an area that I would like the National Curriculum and citizenship to concentrate on: respect for the other, something which I think the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality said a few months ago, I think when he was giving evidence here but I am not sure; it may have been in another place. That is very important. There is another feature. Whilst I would agree that the national curriculum programmes of work are pretty comprehensive, I do not think I would like to take anything out—perhaps that needs another PhD as well, three years of research—but I think the important thing as far as we are concerned is the close connection between giving and belonging. The Chief Rabbi made, I thought, a very good analogy: in a house in which you take refuge you are just a guest but in a house which you help to build you can say, "It is my home". I think if we as faith communities can help to build the house that is Britain we can truly say, as we certainly do, that we belong.

  Dr Mukadam: I would agree with what my colleagues have said. It is very difficult to see what should or needs to be taken out. It is a wonderful thing that those who are involved in it have put through. One thing I would like to say is that flexibility in terms of delivering the citizenship programme needs to be maintained because there are different approaches. Those who have a faith perspective have a different approach and sometimes it is not understood by those who do not have a faith, not realising that it has worked for people of faith for many years and it is more effective to teach this because of the different backgrounds and so forth. I think on the whole it should be maintained but equally important is flexibility in delivering that so that it is delivered through different philosophies, different understandings, rather than having this one-size-fits-all approach which is dominated, I think, by the comprehensive schools and a faith-free approach. I would be quite worried about anything that said it had to be delivered in a particular way.

  Q279  Chairman: Is there not a touch of complacency in some of the things that the four of you are saying in the sense, "Everything is all right in our bailiwick but what is happening in the non-faith sector is probably where the problem lies"? Rather unpleasant characters that are not very good citizens emerge from your schools, from Catholic schools, from Anglican schools and from Muslim schools, do they not? It is not the fact that faith schools do the job of citizenship brilliantly well. We are all human beings, are we not?

  Mr Goulden: We are indeed, Chairman, and we all have the ability to rise higher and do better. What I am saying is that the underpinning of citizenship education through a faith lens—and I am mixing my metaphors so you must forgive me—I personally find easy to do because that is something which we do as part of our faith, culture, religion, philosophy, ethos. I am not saying that everybody is perfect. That is, of course, what we pray for every day. We are not there yet but I am saying that we are trying very hard and we do not have a difficulty with teaching citizenship because it is meat and drink to us.


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2007
Prepared 8 March 2007