Education (Values of British Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Baroness D'Souza Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness D’Souza (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of Young Citizens, formerly the Citizenship Foundation. Teaching citizenship has a relatively short history in the UK, certainly when compared with other European countries. Its formal inclusion in the national curriculum began only in 2002. At this time, citizenship education had become compulsory and a GCSE in citizenship studies was introduced. However, this early promise was not maintained and in 2014, a government review resulted in a weaker programme that stressed constitutional history and volunteerism rather than active citizenship. Furthermore, the requirement for most schools to teach the national curriculum was removed, resulting in a significant decrease in citizenship teaching and, indeed, teachers.

Yet young people today face an extremely complex world, from riots and food poverty in the UK to wars and environmental degradation, but they also feel distanced from a democratic system that might address their concerns. The distrust of politicians, institutions and the democratic process has never been greater: 44% of young people surveyed had little or no confidence in their ability to participate and 63% did not believe that their voice was ever heard or had any impact.

The Bill goes some way to redress the balance. It restates and changes the current set of values, emphasising freedom of thought, speech, religion and assembly, individual worth and respect for the environment. In reframing the fundamental British values, it gives schools the opportunity to focus on cultivating the new values and introduces new connections with human rights, government and policy. In this sense, citizenship education is both a subject in itself and provides a framework for perceiving and relating to society more generally.

Values and attitudes need to be actively taught; in other words, we need to bring citizenship to life. This can be achieved by means of interactive and practical learning. As always, the real test will lie in the implementation. There are many steps that need to be taken, starting with providing teachers with training and resources. The next step is a firm commitment on the part of all schools to incorporate the values of British citizenship within the curriculum. Thereafter, the task will be to evaluate the impact of such courses, hopefully armed with positive results, and to continue to encourage policymakers to recognise the importance of values and support their long-term inclusion in national curricula.