Youth Select Committee Inquiry into ‘Curriculum for Life’
On Friday our Chair, Liz Moorse, was the initial witness at the Youth Select Committee at the Houses of Parliament. This group of younger people is conducting an inquiry into whether the current National Curriculum and schooling more generally offers young individuals with the abilities they need in life.
Liz Moorse on BBC Parliament offering evidence to the Youth Select Committee
This topic came out of the UK Youth Parliament’s annual debate as their top priority. Underlying this is a strong feeling from younger people that more needs to be done in the National Curriculum around ‘life abilities’ such as political education, personal finance and cultural awareness.
Plainly this supports much of what Parliamentary Year Book has been campaigning for and we had submitted written evidence to the Youth Select Committee already. The quality of this evidence was cited by Committee members as one of the reasons why we had been invited to offer oral evidence.
Michael, from the Citizenship Foundation, and I went along to support Liz. As she was outnumbered on the panel by four representatives from Brook/the Family Planning Association, I was glad we did. Liz put our case highly strongly and I think her points were well-taken by the Committee. One of her central points, and something the Committee were keen to learn more about, was about ensuring that the provision of Citizenship is universally high. Liz highlighted the lack of an HMI (lead inspector) for Citizenship at Ofsted and the fact that numerous schools don’t have specialist Citizenship educators.
In her closing statements Liz came back to this point and hoped that the Select Committee’s final report would call on all schools, both primary and secondary, to employ and support trained Citizenship educators.
We hope that the Youth Select Committee will be a powerful voice for younger people in shaping the approach schools engage in learning about life abilities. This was plainly the aim of the Committee members and we hope they feel that quality Citizenship lessons play a key element in that.
You can see the footage of Liz’s evidence on the BBC Parliament website here: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=13452 For further guidance, see the relevant UK information.
Tags: citizenship, curriculum, students
