Cohesion, citizenship and coherence: schools’ responses to the British values policy

Abstract

This paper explores how teachers respond to the requirement to promote ‘fundamental British values’ (FBV) to their pupils. It offers a preliminary analysis of data drawn from interviews with teachers and (mostly lesson) observations in schools. It argue that, first, the policy cannot be understood without a consideration of the multi-layered context in which it is being enacted in schools. Second, it locates the policy to promote FBV as a liberal nationalist one and considers some of the problematic issues that arise from this philosophy. Third, it turns to schools and teachers to consider their reactions and responses. It is concluded that teachers and schools in this research often did attempt to neutralize potentially exclusionary readings of the policy and were effective in absorbing the requirement to promote British values. However, doubt is cast on the policy’s ability to meet its aims and the paper also raise concerns about the limited amount of time given to pupils’ engagement with the values.

KEYWORDS:

• Fundamental British values
• schools
• policy
• liberal nationalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It is interesting to trace which values are identified as British. The short version used by the DfE (2014) and Cameron’s longer version both featured in the 2011 anti-extremist Prevent strategy.

2. The phrase belongs to Ronan McCrea, speaking at a conference on British values at UCL, 16 November 2017.

3. Amanda Spielman recently responded to such criticisms arguing that only a small group of countries including the UK scored highly across the four values, and so therefore to refer to them as ‘British’ values was unproblematic. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/amanda-spielmans-speech-to-the-policy-exchange-think-tank

4. Space does not allow a full discussion of variant definitions of liberal or civic nationalism here, but see e.g. Müller (2007).

5. Conference organized by Inside Government and held in London on 28 September 2017.

6. The Key: https://schoolleaders.thekeysupport.com/curriculum-and-learning/curriculum-guidance-all-phases/structuring-curriculum/promoting-british-values-in-the-curriculum/. Doing SMSC: http://www.doingsmsc.org.uk/british-values/

7. ’Tolerance’ is one of the FBV but it is, as several teachers in the research and a referee of an earlier version of this paper, pointed out, a very limited term.

8. Schools are now held accountable by their progress and attainment across 8 subjects. The way this is measured increases a focus on ‘EBacc’ subjects – traditional academic subjects, which as currently defined do not include RE, Citizenship nor PSHE.

Additional information

Funding

Research funded by the Leverhulme Trust as a Major Research Fellowship (October 2016–September 2018). Award number: MRF-2015-170.