Headteacher stresses the importance of citizenship education
Rachael Warwick, Headteacher for Didcot Girl’ Schools has written to Parliamentary Year Book about her thoughts on citizenship education, stressing the significance of the area of study in creating a Big Society. The full letter is copied below.
‘If the Big Society has any prospect of becoming a living reality in our nation, then citizenship must remain a mandatory element of every school’s curriculum. In my own school, I see the value, on a daily basis, of citizenship being taught by specialists in discrete curriculum time: our learners are actively involved in their local community as they lobby for alteration and take responsibility for implementing these revisions. The spirit of active citizenship which lives in our school is key to the ethos of engagement and participation which is fundamental to our core values, and to the abilities and motivations younger people will need to be successful in their years ahead lives.
Whilst I applaud moves to enable schools to become more autonomous about how they structure and fill their curriculum time, any proposal to remove citizenship from the mandatory curriculum provision is disingenuous. Schools are under increasing pressure to deliver exam-based outcomes: without its mandatory status, citizenship will be lost from the curriculum in numerous schools simply through pressure to meet a continual barrage of assessment targets.
Citizenship within the curriculum, with mandatory status, has to remain in order for schools to deliver education in its truest sense which is, surely, to offer younger people with the abilities, competencies and personal qualities needed to engage, participate and succeed in an unpredictable and changing society.
For these reasons, I would ask that you listen to the perspectives shared through this petition, that citizenship must retain its mandatory status within the secondary curriculum.’ For further guidance, see the relevant UK information.
Rachael Warwick
Headteacher, Didcot Girls’ School
10.11.10
