Examination of Witnesses (Questions 500-519)
LORD ADONIS
6 NOVEMBER 2006
Q500 Chairman: Would you recognise
the experience the Committee has had in terms of seeing active
learning, putting citizenship, without even calling it citizenship
but having processes in the school, like the school's council,
like being told off by certain members of the Committee? One of
the systems we saw was rather like an Athenian democracy. It was
pointed out that women were not allowed to participate.
Lord Adonis: There were lots of
slaves around as well.
Q501 Chairman: That is right, but
in terms of the principle, the forum and much else, it was this
active participation that seemed to be delivering real energy
to the citizenship agenda. Whereas it seemed to us people thought
there was less value in just the subject, where you could argue
how much Shakespeare should there be in citizenship, how much
British history, which date, where did it start, how much about
the British Empire and the pink bits of the map, that one bit
seemed to be much more controversial and resistant than the other.
Lord Adonis: If I take those part
by part, so far as the applied citizenship is concerned, there
is hardly a school in the country which is not seeking to enhance—and
rightly seeking to enhance—the role that pupils play in
the school, forms of participation, the role of volunteering,
the engagement of the school in its community and so on, and all
of those are, as it were, the applied aspects of citizenship.
Taking school councils, one of the things that surprised me about
this was the extent to which they are developing in primary school
to a huge degree. I should say from what I have seen a majority
of primary schools now have school councils and School Councils
UK, with the support of the Department, provides excellent materials
for primary schools in how to set them up. As you say, the debate
there is not about whether; it is about how. A school I visited,
previously a very weak school, which is now making rapid improvements,
I visited last week again and they introduced me to the school's
council. The school's council had itself been interviewing would-be
teachers for posts, and the head teacher told me that he and his
colleagues reached the same conclusion as the school's council
and it was very much an interactive process between the council
and him over the attributes that they wanted in their teachers.
Again, that is a big development in the life of schools, and there
is a debate going on in the schools community about the appropriate
role for councils, including the manner of their election. The
Athenian democracy instance you gave may be a reference to debates
that I know are going on in schools as to whether or not school
councils should be elected by secret ballots in the manner of
parliamentary elections or in a more open process by forms and
so on. So there is a big debate going on in those areas. When
it comes to teaching citizenship as a subject, of course, it is
much less well developed. It is not that it is not a satisfactory
subject in its own right; I think the evidence is that it is.
If you actually look at the component parts of the subject, they
look to me to stand as clearly and satisfactorily as a subject
as other subjects. Students can read from the programme of study
for Key Stage 4: students should be taught about the legal and
human rights and responsibilities underpinning society and how
they relate to citizens, including the role and operation of the
criminal and civil justice systems; the origins and implications
of the diverse national, regional, religious and ethnic identities
of the United Kingdom and the need for mutual respect and understanding;
the work of Parliament, the Government and the courts in making
and shaping the law; the importance of playing an active part
in democratic and electoral processes, and so it goes on. I have
no difficulty, Chairman, in looking at that and saying that this
is a satisfactory subject; it has as much coherence as any other
subject in the curriculum. There is at the moment only a limited
number of citizenship teachers out there who are teaching it.
The tooling up of the profession to be able to teach it in the
systematic way that you require of any subject has a lot further
to go and I think that is what gives some of the air of uncertainty
about it in and out of schools.
Q502 Chairman: Is it partly though
your fault, Lord Adonis, in the sense that everyone sees you as
the kind of wisdom on this? It is very much related to how people
think about the citizenship agenda being very close to your heart.
Is your enthusiasm shared by the rest of the ministerial team?
Lord Adonis: It has absolutely
been shared by successive Secretaries of State. David Blunkett,
of course, introduced it; Estelle Morris's successor had been
Minister of State when it was introduced and was very enthusiastic
about it and the same has been true of Charles Clarke, Ruth Kelly
and now Alan. So there has been no shortage of enthusiasm. The
issue, of course, has been one of tooling up. We are training
now about 220 citizenship teachers a year through initial teacher
training. That is 220 more than of course was taking place before
the subject started, and that has taken us to about 1,000 teacher
training places made available by the end of this academic year.
That is a huge advance; in four years we now have nearly 1,000
teachers who will have gone through the system with full ITT training,
but of course, there are 3,500 secondary schools, which means
that, even assuming that those teachers are spread evenly, the
majority of secondary schools still will not have a dedicated
citizenship teacher. There is a perfectly reasonable explanation
for that, which is that it takes time to train teachers. We are
taking another big step forward this year with the new certificate
training for in-service training for teachers, 1,200 places over
the next two years of in-service training for teachers, including
a distance learning option which we are developing with Birkbeck
College. Again, if those 1,200 places are taken up, plus the existing
1,000, we may, I hope, get to the position fairly soon where a
majority of secondary schools do have a dedicated citizenship
teacher, but it does take time to get to that position and that
is the objective which is uppermost in our minds.
Chairman: That moves us nicely on to
leadership.
Q503 Paul Holmes: At the start of
the Committee's inquiry, Sir Bernard Crick gave evidence and he
seemed disillusioned. He told us that he thought that some senior
politicians either had no faith in the citizenship programme or
they had forgotten it existed at all. There seemed to be a suggestion
that you had had the headlines four years ago and now you have
moved on to other initiatives that would interest the press. How
would you comment on that?
Lord Adonis: I read Bernard's
evidence in full. I thought what he said was that, of course,
he has had a continuing concern about, as it were, seeking to
educate the political class about the importance of citizenship
education in schools but he also, when he described the progress
that had been made, he thought the progress that had been made
had been good—that is what he said to you—considering
that we were starting from a standing start four years ago. What
was interesting about what he said, and what I think is interesting
about the debate, is I remember vividly, because I was in Number
10 as an adviser at the time when Bernard first reported and the
debate was taking place about whether citizenship should be introduced
as a subject. The big concern then was partly a concern about
teacher workload, as there always is when introducing new subjects.
There was a big concern about whether this would be seen as political
indoctrination, unacceptable forms of partisanship in schools
and so on. To my mind, as I remember the discussion at the time,
that was our biggest concern, that we as a Government at the time
would be seen as trying to take politics into the classroom by
allowing citizenship education to be taught. One of the things
I find very striking about the debate now is that that really
does not feature at all. I have looked at the discussion in your
Committee, including the questions you have been asking of your
witnesses. Very few people have been seeking to argue that those
aspects of the system that I read out—legal and human rights
and responsibilities, the origins and implications of a diverse
national, regional and religious identities, the work of Parliament,
Government and the courts, the importance of playing an active
part in democratic and electoral processes and so on—represent
indoctrination. Indeed, when I appeared about six months ago now
before the Modernisation Committee with the then Leader of the
House in the chair, there was a universal enthusiasm amongst all
of the Members present from all parties to see Parliament itself
play a bigger part in the development of citizenship education
in schools. One of the ideas that we discussed—as it happens
it was a long exchange between myself and Theresa May across the
Committee—was whether MPs could play a bigger part in mentoring
citizenship, trainee citizenship teachers, which I think is an
excellent idea because we have 220-odd ITT citizenship teachers
a year. Would it not be a great idea, Chair, if we could have
each of them partnered with a Member? She thought this was a good
idea; the then Chair, Geoff Hoon, did too. As a result of those
exchanges we are now, with the Hansard Society, starting a pilot
scheme of partnering ITT students in citizenship with Members
on a systematic basis as part of the year that they spend doing
their ITT. All these sorts of practical proposals I think will
increasingly embed citizenship and I think make it, in so far
as there is any continuing tinge of controversy about it as a
subject, much more of a practical task of embedding it and getting
all of those of us who are passionate about the subject to be
able to help the community of citizenship teachers make an impact
in schools.
Q504 Paul Holmes: You have raised
a lot of interesting points but, with respect, none of them answered
my question. Let us try again. Sir Bernard Crick specifically
said to the Committee he was amazed that from the Prime Minister
and other Ministers we now get a great deal of talk about respect,
about problems of integration, about problems of youth behaviour
but all this was why we set up a Citizenship Advisory Group; it
is all embedded in the order itself, and he said "I am amazed
that some senior politicians either do not have faith in the citizenship
programme or perhaps have forgotten about it in the welter of
initiatives that there are. This is a long-term initiative."
So he did not really seem very happy with the way things were
going.
Lord Adonis: I was giving you
an answer to that question, saying I do not agree with that view.
In my experience of dealing with senior politicians of all parties,
including the Prime Minister, they are thoroughly committed to
the embedding of citizenship education, both as a subject and
in its applied dimension within schools, and I gave the example
of the Modernisation Committee, which is a group of leading Members
who exhibited that commitment to me. So I do not recognise that
description. If Bernard is meaning to say that of course, there
is more that we can all do—by "we" I mean Members,
Members of my House as well—I am sure that is true; there
is more we can do, for example, in mentoring, in getting engaged
in citizenship teaching in our own constituencies, where Members
go into schools and so on. I am sure there is more that can be
done but I have never found any lack of willingness to recognise
its importance or to engage in it when invited to do so.
Q505 Paul Holmes: Until last year,
2005, there was a ministerial working party on citizenship that
has been disbanded. Would it not have been a good idea to show
a commitment to citizenship that that should be reformed and put
some weight behind what is happening?
Lord Adonis: There still is a
working party on citizenship, an education working party which
meets regularly. I meet members of the citizenship community myself
bilaterally frequently, both my advisers inside the Department
but also the Citizenship Foundation and other organisations, so
there is a strong commitment on the part of Ministers.
Q506 Paul Holmes: Who is on this
working party, the one that still continues?
Lord Adonis: It embraces leading
figures from my Department, from the DCA and from the Home Office.
I do not know the membership here but I can supply that.
Q507 Chairman: When did it last meet?
Lord Adonis: I am not sure. It
meets regularly. I can provide you with the details.[1]
Q508 Paul Holmes: The other Minister
that is on it is yourself?
Lord Adonis: I do not serve on
it myself, no. It is an official-level working party.
Q509 Paul Holmes: So the ministerial
working party folded last year?
Lord Adonis: I would not say folded.
In terms of the work that we have been taking forward, I did not
think that it was necessary for me personally to attend the working
party itself for that work to be taken forward, but I meet my
advisers who serve on the working party frequently and we take
forward that work as we need to at ministerial level.
Q510 Paul Holmes: When different
things happen and hit the media, we get politicians saying "We
can do this through citizenship in schools." There seems
to be a lot of confusion in schools and elsewhere: what is the
citizenship agenda? Is it about teaching Britishness, or is it
about exploring diversity, or is it about bringing up children
to be entrepreneurs, or is it about teaching respect, or is it
about active citizenship like school councils, or is it about
formal political structures like the list you read out at the
start of your evidence today? What is the citizenship agenda?
Lord Adonis: If I could first
of all answer Mr Holmes' previous question, in fact, I am told
that it is chaired by Lord Phillips of Sudbury, who is a member
of the other House and a member of your party, and the vice chair
is Jan Newton, who is our citizenship adviser. What does the subject
entail? It entails all of those things that you mentioned in your
question. It has an emphasis, there. There are three pillars to
it: knowledge and understanding, developing skills of inquiry,
and developing skills of participation. All three of those are
integral to citizenship, and within each of those is expected
to feature social and moral responsibility, community involvement
and political literacy and, as I said in my first answer to the
Chairman, it is a multifaceted subject. It is both very clearly
a subject in its own right in terms of the curriculum concept
that it embraces; it is also very much an applied subject too
and taking it forward on both of those fronts is a challenge.
Q511 Paul Holmes: Is it primarily
a body of knowledge or is it primarily a process that pupils go
through?
Lord Adonis: I would say myself
that both sides are equally important. If by the applied side
you mean that whole programme of activities in schools to do with
pupil participation, community engagement, volunteering and so
on, which are absolutely vital to the life of a school and to
the development of pupils as citizens in due course, I would say
that it is just as important that they practise those elements
and that they see them in practice in their schools, in participatory
systems and so on, as that they learn the theory. I would not
want to say that one is more important than the other.
Q512 Paul Holmes: So, although it
is a contradiction in terms, should we go along with the IPPR
report today and make volunteering in schools compulsory?
Lord Adonis: Would I like to see
more volunteering in schools? Absolutely, steadily more, and for
it to become increasingly embraced in the work that pupils do,
as indeed I believe it is in most schools now because, as you
say, as soon as volunteering ceases to be voluntary then it ceases
to be volunteering.
Q513 Fiona Mactaggart: You have made
a pretty convincing case that successive Secretaries of State
are behind this agenda, but what about head teachers? Do you think
that head teachers are behind this, and what is your evidence
for how head teachers feel about this?
Lord Adonis: I, as ever on these
matters, since I only visit a limited number of schools myself
and speak to a limited number of head teachers, rely on Ofsted,
and you have had Ofsted before you giving evidence. Ofsted's conclusion
is that, and I quote, "a minority of schools have embraced
citizenship with enthusiasm and have worked hard to establish
it as a significant part of their curriculum." Others, also
a minority, they stress, have done very little and they say that
25% they think have inadequate position. Sometimes, they say,
this is because of the nature or scale of what is intended, but
this has been misunderstood. In other cases it is because schools
have believed mistakenly that they are doing it already as manifested
in their ethos and the good disposition of their pupils. In a
small number of schools there is no will to change because of
other priorities. In between these extremes are the majority of
schools, that have significant elements of citizenship in place
but have not yet established a complete programme. That seems
to me to reflect Ofsted's view of the position of school leadership.
Q514 Fiona Mactaggart: So what Ofsted
say is a quarter are doing well, 50% are bumbling along and a
quarter are not doing so well. That is a summary of that.
Lord Adonis: I think "bumbling
along" might be slightly unfair interpretation. What they
said was that the majority have significant elements of citizenship
in place, which I take to be more than bumbling along but less
than the minority which have "embraced it with enthusiasm
and have worked hard to establish it as a significant part of
their curriculum."
Q515 Fiona Mactaggart: One of the
things that is very clear from that Ofsted report is the connection
between good leadership in schools and those schools which are
doing well in this area. They say that schools which are fulfilling
the ambition for citizenship are generally those which have a
clear view of the leadership and management of citizenship. What
I wanted to know is actually what you are doing to get that clear
view more widespread, beyond the 25% which have it to the 75%
which are not doing badly and to the 25% which are failing to
achieve what we have a right to expect on this.
Lord Adonis: My view of how we
will actually get to good citizenship education as a subject in
school, by which I mean the teaching of the citizenship curriculum,
is that it is going to be difficult to do that until you have
a trained citizenship teacher in every secondary school and, in
fact, the very existence of a trained citizenship teacher is a
declaration by the leadership of the school that they take it
sufficiently seriously as a subject that they want teachers who
actually have accredited expertise in the subject teaching it.
You would not think of having science or history or geography,
saying that these are important to the life of the school, if
you did not have a properly trained teacher. That is why we are
placing such emphasis on continuing to roll out ITT in citizenship
so we get another few hundred a year coming through of new secondary
teachers who are specifically trained in citizenship and also,
as I said earlier, rolling out the certificate. If we can get
600 teachers a year through the certificate, all of whom of course
are teachers who previously did not have any expertise specifically
in citizenship, then I would hope over quite a short period of
time we can start to eat into that group of schools which you
were describing that do not have citizenship teachers or whose
practice has been poor in the past and get to them with trained
teachers. We are doing things across the board as well. As you
heard in earlier sittings, we have provided a lot of CPD material,
for instance, the new professional development handbook Making
Sense of Citizenship, which my Department has funded with
the Citizenship Foundation and with the Association for Citizenship
Teaching. Two copies of that, which has recently been produced,
have gone to every school in the country. In the past we have
helped to fund the Young Citizen's Passport, which the Citizenship
Foundation now sends to every school in the country. There are
a whole lot of materials that we have provided to schools. There
is a self-evaluation tool for secondary schools available; we
have just introduced a self-evaluation tool in citizenship for
primary schools too. So in all of those key areas where we believe
we can make a difference we have been providing support but, as
I say, my analysis of the challenge is that, until you have a
trained citizenship teacher in a secondary school, you are unlikely
to have it treated with the proper seriousness it deserves as
a subject.
Q516 Fiona Mactaggart: That might
well be the view of the Committee when we come to report but actually,
an awful lot of the citizenship education is happening in primary
schools, and we do not expect primary schools to necessarily have
specialist citizenship educators. At that point, it really does
come down to leadership from the heads in order to ensure that
the curriculum does include it well. You have referred to one
of your publications which focuses on that but what else are you
doing to ensure that, in the primary curriculum, this is an important
part of what goes on?
Lord Adonis: I referred to the
self-evaluation tool, which I believe can make a big difference.
In other discrete areas we have been providing assistance too.
For example, we discussed earlier school councils. We have provided,
with the help of School Councils UK, a new tool for all primary
schools to be able to establish school councils, which has a great
deal of other material about how they can engage primary school
students in participation in their school. We now have NPQH for
primary school teachers, which is new, and one of the focuses
of NPQH training is how you help to develop whole-school policies
which engage pupils and staff more fully than in the past. So
there is a set of things going on in primary schools. We also
have a scheme of work which we are developing for primary school
pupils in citizenship too and, of course, even though it is not
a statutory subject in Key Stage 2, there is a scheme of work
and there are materials which are available to schools in order
that they may teach citizenship in primary schools as well as
secondary.
Q517 Chairman: I want to move on.
Is this citizenship programme doing any good? I thought I saw
a poll last week that suggested we have some of the worst behaved
teenagers in Europe. Are you disappointed by that, Lord Adonis?
Lord Adonis: I was very interested
to see your exchange with Sir Bernard Crick on that subject, who
said that you could not expect to have a wider effect in society
as a whole until a whole cohort of students had gone through,
and he referred to the eight-year longitudinal study that is taking
place. I would hope that it will make a difference. There are
those of us who believe that actually, teaching pupils to be better
citizens in schools will have an effect after school. We are clearly
expecting that it will have a knock-on effect in society at large
in due course but Sir Bernard was, of course, right that we are
in the early days of citizenship teaching in schools so far, so
you cannot expect it to solve all of the ills outside.
Q518 Chairman: Perhaps your Department
should have an ability to check some of these so-called surveys
for their authenticity and their scientific method. We now have
something called the BBC Research Unit, which seems to be the
ability to phone up 50 people in a hurry and ask them their opinion.
Going round schools, people have been very upset because they
do not see our teenagers as the worst in Europe; they see very
good students, working well, being absolutely fantastic. The morale
of schools is affected by these things.
Lord Adonis: I would, of course,
agree with that, Chairman, and of course, what the last seven
or eight years has shown is consistently improving quality of
education, including the ethos of schools and behaviour as found
by Ofsted. So the picture that you have just painted, I think,
is the reality of the schools but of course, in terms of the link
between other surveys showing behaviour out of schools, I cannot
make the direct connection.
Chairman: They should come to some of
the schools that we as a Committee visit or even come into Dining
Room B today, where we had Clermont School, which is a performing
arts specialist school, performing for us excerpts from Carousel.
What a talented group of young people!
Q519 Helen Jones: Ofsted found the
teaching of citizenship in a quarter of schools as unsatisfactory,
and you yourself rightly referred to the need to develop a number
of specialist citizenship education teachers in schools. Do you
think that aspiration can be fulfilled if the number of initial
teacher training places for citizenship is actually going to fall
over the next few years?
Lord Adonis: It is not falling
by much. In this year, 2006-07—
The Committee suspended from 4.32 pm to 4.41
pm for a division in the House. Helen Jones: I
think you were in the process of answering my question.
Chairman: Would you like to be reminded
of the question?
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