Why Citizen Schools?

Statutory Drivers: the things schools have to do

There exist a myriad of responsibilities placed on schools for citizenship education. Schools must provide it across Key Stage 3 and 4; all schools must show how they are now helping to create responsible citizens; schools have a duty to promote community cohesion; student voice is now inspected on and reported on by OFSTED; parental engagement is seen as key to the educational achievement of children; through Every Child Matters, schools must ensure they are giving young people the opportunity to make a positive contribution to their communities, while Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child reaffirms young people's rights to be involved in (political) decisions that affect them. Citizen Schools looks to support schools in creating strategic, sustainable and powerful approaches to make all this happen.

Demand from Schools

The Citizen Schools Pathway has been vastly oversubscribed: a total of 50 schools across London competed for the 15 places available. Schools from yorkshire, the Lake District, Kent and Brighton all wanted to join. 300 citizenship practitioners and educationalists joined the Citizen Schools Community in a few months. Schools are looking for creative ways to work out how to provide an active education for active, responsible citizens.

Citizenship Education's State of Play

Only a ‘small minority of schools have embraced [citizenship] with enthusiasm and have worked hard to establish it as a significant part of their curriculum’ (OFSTED 2007), while a quarter of schools still provide inadequate citizenship education. We also know that ‘inadequate provision is closely linked to a lack of commitment from senior leaders’ (OFSTED 2007), and we know from the work of The House of Commons Education and Skills Committee's investigation into citizenship education that more needs to be done to show just what whole-school and active citizenship can be and can achieve. Citizen Schools sets out to do this.

Time for a New Politics

To tackle today's disengagement from decison-making dogma, powers of politics and governance need to engage with communities on real collaborative terms - a far cry from the tokenism many perceive to abound. Citizenship education and Citizen Schools provide a pathway to reconnect people and politicians so as to restore confidence in and reshape democracy - which was ultimately the aim of the Crick Report back in 1998.

Citizenship education is all about change - giving young people the opportunity and experience of trying to effect change. Citizen Schools and active citizenship education is about reinvigorating trust and faith in public institutions - by enabling young people and communities to question, challenge and hold such institutions and the decision makers which govern them to account.