Development planning

This section outlines a model for planning for curriculum change, including undertaking a curriculum audit. It is based on a belief that curriculum design needs to be undertaken by viewing the curriculum as a single entity, as opposed to interconnected parts.

Citizenship education is best seen as embracing the students’ whole personal and social development. In order for this to happen, all those concerned with curriculum change need to be clear about the purposes, and have consensus about the general shape of the curriculum. Inevitably, any move to clarity and consensus will need to be through an agreed set of values about the overall nature of the task. The debate should involve not only teachers, but also parents, governors, employers (both possible future employers and work experience employers), and local community groups, etc.

The whole school approach is necessarily both more time-consuming and more involved than an approach that simply ‘bolts on’ the citizenship curriculum to the current curriculum and practice. The argument developed through this section is that the latter approach misses an important opportunity to embed citizenship education in the heart of the life and practice of the school.

Central to the establishment of shared principles is a focus on the learner. A curriculum should have the following qualities:

breadth differentiation balance progression

relevance continuity coherence.

The development of such a curriculum and the establishment of shared principles assumes that schools create appropriate structures to promote a climate of cooperation, commitment and dialogue. If these elements are missing, then the process of planning the development of the citizenship curriculum should help to establish new working practices. This should have significant tangential benefits for the life of the school.