Schools: Citizenship Education

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure that I completely followed the noble Baroness’s question. RSHE is already a requirement in secondary school. If I may, I will come back to the noble Baroness and clarify.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

The schools White Paper mentions citizenship once, there is no bursary, the Government do not collect the data on initial teacher training in citizenship, and Ofsted does not consider it in the same way as other curriculum subjects. Can the Minister understand why noble Lords are concerned that the Government are not giving citizenship the focus that it needs?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand that the context of the society in which we currently live, and of some of the issues around the world, make citizenship and that really strong grounding in our values as a nation incredibly important. On the noble Baroness’s specific points, evidence of citizenship education is considered at every inspection; whereas, if it were part of a national curriculum subject inspection, it would not be inspected in quite the same way. I point the House to the reforms that we have made to professional qualifications for teachers, particularly in relation to leadership, where there is a renewed emphasis on building a strong school ethos, leading in terms of behaviour and culture, and building character.