Citizenship issues

Citizenship - better than you could reasonably expect

www.ofsted.gov.uk

This morning I heard Bernard Crick on the Today programme discussing with Miriam Rosen of Ofsted the latest report from the inspectors about the teaching of Citizenship in secondary schools

On Monday I was in York at a seminar about Applied Science GCSE where I heard about the findings of a study by Jim Donnelly of Leeds University - together with accounts from teachers and Ofsted about the practical realities of the new courses.

What is the connection?

Both are major new initiative which teachers and schools are expected to implement with minimal support, time to prepare and training. DfES, QCA, Awarding Bodies and others will the aims but they have an irresponsible optimism in teachers' ability to achieve the ends. It is a tribute to teachers that so much good work happens despite the inevitable variability in quality.

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Fri, 29 September 2006 : Jenny Wales

The progress made in the teaching of Citizenship in schools is quite astonishing. In 2003 Ofsted reported that: In the majority of schools, steps have been taken to introduce citizenship as a new subject, but there is much confusion between the many things that schools do to support pupils’ citizenship generally and the formal teaching of citizenship to all pupils as a National Curriculum subject. By 2006 it said: Significant progress has been made in implementing National Curriculum citizenship in many secondary schools. However, there is not yet a strong consensus about the aims of citizenship education or about how to incorporate it into the curriculum. In a quarter of schools surveyed, provision is still inadequate, reflecting weak leadership and lack of specialist teaching. This improvement has come about through the hard work of committed teachers with considerable support, at least initially, from government and its agencies. Ofsted has discovered that, like almost any other initiative, the attitude of senior leadership is critical to success. At Nuffield, we have attempted to help the process of persuasion with hot-seats on the topic on the National College of School Leadership website, articles in the TES and Teaching Citizenship which help teachers show the leadership team the benefits of taking Citizenship seriously. There is a growing body of evidence that shows that in schools where students participate through Citizenship, attainment rises. If nothing else, most heads find this argument hard to resist.