Education (Values of British Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Lord Carter of Haslemere Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, the ambition in the Bill of highlighting the importance for education purposes of democracy, the rule of law, freedom, individual worth and respect for the environment is to be warmly welcomed. These constitutional issues go to the very heart of our values as British citizens. I therefore applaud the noble and right reverend Lord for pursuing this agenda over a number of years.

Ideally, like the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, I would like to have seen included on the list a reference to human rights and the balance to be struck between such rights and individual responsibilities. Sir Peter Gross’s Independent Human Rights Act Review strongly recommended

“an effective programme of civic and constitutional education”

in our schools and universities, with a focus on human rights. There is a reference to human rights in the requirements for key stage 4, but we know from two House of Lords committees of inquiry, in 2018 and 2022, that this and the teaching of other constituent elements of citizenship have been badly neglected.

The 2022 committee report also recommended a statutory entitlement to citizenship education from key stages 1 to 4. The noble and right reverend Lord’s amendment to the Schools Bill in July 2022 would have achieved this. After setting out the same list of values of British citizenship included in this Bill, the amendment would have required those values to be taught as part of citizenship at all four key stages. As he said then, this would not have involved a change to the curriculum, which requires British values to be taught at the moment, but rather is an accurate listing of the values in question to gain greater support from teachers and pupils.

For me, this is what is missing from today’s otherwise excellent Bill, since it is restricted to statements made by the Secretary of State, Ofsted and other public authorities. There does not seem to be a direct link, legally at least, with the curriculum and its requirement to teach citizenship, so I do not see how the Bill will legally require the teaching of citizenship to refer to the key values of British citizenship set out here, even if the Secretary of State and public authorities are required to refer to them when making statements relating to British values for education purposes.

That said, I shall of course support the Bill and hope that citizenship teachers will see statements by the relevant authorities as an encouragement to improve citizenship education along the lines that the Bill sets out.