Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Main Page: Lord Phillips of Sudbury (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Phillips of Sudbury's debates with the Department for Education
(9 years, 7 months ago)
Lords Chamber
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they propose to enhance the amount and quality of citizenship education in order to increase the democratic participation and engagement of young citizens.
My Lords, citizenship is a compulsory subject in maintained secondary schools. The new programme of study ensures that teaching is directed towards how our country is governed rather than the more issues-based content that dominated the former programme of study. This will help prepare pupils to play a full and active part in society. We will continue to promote resources for schools, such as the democratic engagement resource, Rock Enrol!
I thank my noble friend for that reply, but does he not agree that engaging in today’s hyper-complex, democratically challenged society, particularly for less able pupils, requires an absolute minimum of knowledge and the will to engage? What does he think of the effect, by contrast, of 56% of our schools—all free schools and academies—not even having to teach citizenship; of the rest not being Ofsted-inspected, vis-à-vis citizenship education; and of the number of specialist teachers teaching citizenship for examinations and pupils taking it being in freefall?
All academies and free schools are required to teach a broad and balanced curriculum, and we trust academies to teach citizenship and prepare their pupils for life in modern Britain. I am sure that my noble friend will be delighted to hear that under this Government the number of pupils taking the full course of GSCE citizenship has more than doubled.