Government 'British values' agenda is meeting resistance, writes TIM ROSS

A quarter of schools are failing to teach children about the workings of British democracy and their rights and responsibilities as citizens, inspectors have warned.

Ofsted judged 25 per cent of schools inspected in the past year "inadequate" for the quality of their lessons in citizenship.

Government ministers believe citizenship classes, which may in future be required to cover core 'British values', will help reduce extremism and violence among young people.

But despite citizenship being compulsory since 2002, some schools in England hardly teach the subject at all, according to the watchdog's latest report.

Ofsted's director of education, Miriam Rosen, called for urgent improvements to the quality of teaching.

She said: "Citizenship is still seen as the poor relation of more established subjects, but it requires teachers to be highly skilled and able to deal with contentious and sometimes difficult issues.

"Urgent attention is needed to make sure it is a central part of the school curriculum and ethos."

Many teachers who run citizenship classes are not specialists in the subject, Ofsted said. And there is widespread misunderstanding in schools over what is required.

A "minority" of schools have worked hard to make citizenship a key part of the curriculum.

"Others, also a minority, have done very little," the report said.

"Sometimes, this is because the nature or scale of what is intended has been misunderstood. In other cases, this is because schools have believed, mistakenly, that they are doing it already', as manifested in their ethos and the good disposition of their pupils.

"In a small number of schools there is no will to change, because of other priorities, resistance to the idea of citizenship education, or an expectation that it will go away."

Many schools fail to engage pupils enough in discussing the big political issues of the day during lessons, Ofsted said.

Sir Bernard Crick, one of the architects of citizenship in schools, said the subject should educate children in how to be politically literate using real issues.

"Being taught to respect the law without learning how bad laws can be changed and better ones promoted tends to create apathetic subjects rather than active citizens," he said. "At the worst, disengagement can lead to acts of delinquent rebellion against a social order that young people feel powerless to influence."

Chris Harris, head of Larkmead School, Abingdon, said some schools were not completely happy with the way citizenship is taught.

He said his school was drawing up a personal development curriculum, which would include citizenship in a wider context which would include work-related learning, careers, enterprise and personal, social and health education.

Mr Harris said: "We would like to see citizenship as part of a personal curriculum. This would give it a more coherent place in the curriculum."

Earlier this year, Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell suggested all secondary schools in England may need to give lessons in core "British values" as part of citizenship in future, to help promote social cohesion and counter extremism. He said: "We need to embed greater understanding of our values and what our society expects from all its citizens."

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: "Citizenship is still a relatively new subject which Ofsted says is improving - inspectors saw much good practice and we are confident it can be successful. We are training 1,200 new citizenship teachers over the next two years and have provided schools with a self-evaluation tool and teaching handbook." "The QCA has also given support materials and we are pleased Ofsted considers seven out of ten lessons to be good.

"Citizenship has had a positive impact on the curriculum in the majority of schools and we are confident it will continue to improve as it becomes more embedded."