I’ve been to the Liberal Democrats and Labour party conferences so far this conference season (and will be heading off to the Conservatives in Birmingham on Monday). Conferences are a strange experience, where work and play get all muddled up together and sore heads at breakfast sessions are de rigueur.
Yet, while it might sound like nothing more than a jolly, the party conferences I’ve attended so far have been really useful in terms of gathering intelligence about how politicians feel about citizenship education. I’ve additionally managed to introduce Parliamentary Year Book to a few bodies who could turn out to be powerful advocates for our campaign. So far so productive.
Two of the responses to queries I posed at the two conferences on the value of citizenship education stand out for me. The initial was from Lord Jim Knight, former schools minister, who stated that as long as there was a national curriculum he thought citizenship should be a element of it. The second came from Duncan Hames MP, a new parliamentarian and PPS to Sarah Teather (the current schools minister). While we’re worried about what the government has planned for citizenship education, Hames stated that Liberal Democrats have always been vociferous supporters of citizenship and he believes that it should be essential in all learners’ development. That’s quite the endorsement – and certainly one we’ll be following up on. For further guidance, see the relevant UK information.
Molly
