Implementing Citizenship in the English Secondary School Curriculum: A Follow-Up Study

This article represents a follow-up snapshot of a group of state secondary schools in the North of England. It examines the progress of the schools in the second year of the statutory inclusion of citizenship in the revised National Curriculum. The writers use the same modus operandi as in the previous article (Calvert and Clemitshaw, 2003) to present a picture of both the management and curriculum aspects of the changes. The article draws on data from interviews with the citizenship co-ordinators (CCs) of each school, and there is an overview in the form of a grid. Readers are encouraged to look back at the previous article to track the changes that have taken place since September 2002.
The study reveals that there are some common patterns and difficulties emerging, particularly with regard to assessment and reporting and some of the problems that have always beset PSHE and pastoral care. These same issues are predictably affecting the progress of the initiative. Principally, the status of the subject, resourcing and levels of understanding, training and commitment of staff are ongoing problems. A leitmotiv running through the interviews is the constant pressure of other initiatives and their effects on change at a time of internal turbulence for a number of the schools. Some progress is being made and it would have been unrealistic to expect all schools to adopt the subject without difficulty but, in spite of the CCs' best efforts, there are still issues that might give cause for concern and that are graphically highlighted by individual cases.