Education for citizenship in England's secondary schools: a critique of current principle and practice

Abstract

This article presents a critique of both the underlying philosophy and the subsequent implementation of the 1998 Crick Report. It is argued that the conceptual weaknesses and contradictions of the Report's model of citizenship education have contributed to the ineffective adoption of the subject into the secondary school curriculum. In particular, the Crick Report presents an abstract view of citizenship that is divorced from its institutional and structural context. The Report fails to address adequately how the following issues impact upon citizenship education: diversity in secondary school provision; social exclusion; changing conceptions of the political, and the appropriate form of delivery for the subject. The negative consequences of the failure to consider these issues in sufficient depth is demonstrated through a synthesis of a range of current research critical of the Crick Report's implementation.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Paul Connolly at Queen's University, Belfast and the journal's two referees for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.