Curriculum review, launched today by Michael Gove, could spell end to compulsory citizenship classes
England would return to being the least politically literate country in the developed world if ministers stop classes in citizenship being compulsory in schools, teachers warned today.
Teachers fear a major review of the national curriculum, being launched today by the education secretary Michael Gove, will demote citizenship to an optional subject. This would work against the aims of the "big society", they argue.
Citizenship classes have been a compulsory part of the national curriculum for 11- to 16-year-olds in England since 2002. The subject was brought in, to much fanfare, by David Blunkett, the then home secretary.
But Gove has promised a slimmed-down national curriculum. Speaking ahead of the launch of today's curriculum review, Gove said the curriculum "must not cover every conceivable area of human knowledge or endeavour and should not become a vehicle for imposing passing political fads".
He has appointed Tim Oates, director of assessment and research at Cambridge University's exam board Cambridge Assessment, and four other experts to lead the review.
In a research paper published in November, Oates wrote that new subjects had been "repeatedly" added to the national curriculum. These included sexual health as a theme in biology, as well as citizenship, he said.
Chris Waller, head of the Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT) which represents 2,000 citizenship teachers, said England would be "completely unique" in the developed world in depriving teenagers of "political and legal literacy" if citizenship classes were abolished.
"We have made huge strides in terms of teenagers' knowledge. Citizenship cannot simply be absorbed into other subjects." Abolishing the subject would set England back 15 years to when it was "the least politically literate country in the developed world".
Waller said research had shown that teenagers who opted to take citizenship as a GCSE subject were more likely to have a positive attitude towards civic and political participation.
Citizenship is thought to be the fastest growing subject at GCSE. More than 100,000 teenagers take a qualification in it each year. Students study topics such as crime and justice, the role of the United Nations and how to be an "active citizen".
The ACT and the Citizenship Foundation, which provides teaching materials, said ministers had been vague about whether the subject would be kept in the national curriculum.
Last month, ministers unveiled which subjects would make up part of the new English baccalaureate qualification: maths, English, science, foreign languages and a humanity, such as history or geography. Gove has said that his intention is to "restore the national curriculum to its original purpose – a core national entitlement organised around subject disciplines".
Andy Thornton, chief executive of the Citizenship Foundation, said: "So far responses from the Department for Education to our enquiries have been noncommittal and focus mainly on the coalition's proposals for a 'national citizens service'."
"It would be baffling for the DfE to propose to cut the only subject in the curriculum that explicitly teaches young people about the way that politics, democracy, the law and economy works, and how they can take participate society," Thornton said.
Cutting citizenship would mean a return to "an era where only the privileged few will learn about how our democracy works, how laws are made, where our taxes go, and how they can make a difference in their communities".
Blunkett, who is today leading a delegation to lobby the government not to scrap citizenship, said: "We could not have a civilised, well-informed and participatory democracy if it didn't have young people who understood the world around them and their role as active citizens."
A DfE spokeswoman said it was important that pupils had "a strong sense of citizenship" and that "further details" would be published in due course.