Democratic Life member Lee Jerome writes to Graham Holley of the TDA querying the apparent lack of training places for citizenship teachers in 2011/12, following a letter from Michael Gove outlining the allocations for the coming year.
2nd February 2011
Re: Allocation of secondary training places for 2011-12
Dear Mr Holley
Michael Gove’s letter of 31st January raises concerns for those of us in the citizenship education community, as citizenship is the only statutory national curriculum subject which does not appear as a category in the allocation table. It appears we have been subsumed into social studies or ‘other’. The curriculum review being conducted for the DfE will consult on the nature of the future curriculum and Michael Gove reassured representatives from citizenship organisations this week that the status of citizenship has not been decided and that there will be an open debate on the matter.
We are writing now to urge you to reflect this in the allocations you make to citizenship PGCE courses for 2011-12. As a nation we have failed to train sufficient numbers of citizenship specialists since the introduction of the subject into the national curriculum, and this has had an effect on the quality of education experienced by young people. The recently completed evaluation of citizenship education, published by the DfE, indicates that where specialists provide discrete lessons, there is a significant impact on learning. The absence of specialist teachers in many schools is a source of many of the subject’s difficulties.
To reduce the numbers of trainee teachers in this subject at all, seems to threaten the quality of provision in schools. To reduce it by any more than the average of other subjects under review would seem to pre-empt the findings of the curriculum review. We therefore urge you will deal with citizenship allocations in a fair way, despite the disappearance of the subject as a discrete category in the Secretary of State’s letter.
Yours sincerely,
Lee Jerome
On behalf of citizED
Programme Director, Secondary Initial Teacher Education
Department of Education
London Metropolitan University
UPDATE: By digging further we found that citizenship teacher training (pdf) has survived in some universities, though in small numbers. While this is better news than we initially thought, the worry now is that universities will drop citizenship ITT becomes it doesn’t make financial sense at such small numbers.
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Is the review of the National Curriculum an open or shut case? One National Curriculum subject absent from the list of allocations, yet Mr Gove assures us that that decisions about the review have not be taken and the debate, he says, is open.
The reforms in the White Paper are intended to focus on the quality teaching. All the evidence from Ofsted and the DFE’s own longitudinal survey of citizenship is that specialist teachers are essential to ensure quality teaching and good standards of achievement for students. The lack of resources and specialists has hindered the development of the subject in schools. So what does this decision signal? Many will see it as a sign that the decision on citizenship has already been made. We can only hope this is some kind of administrative error.
Pleased to discover there are some places for citizenship trainees next year and that the information was left off Mr Gove’s letter. Still disappointing to see cuts in numbers across the board though.