In the 1970s, the ‘political literacy’ movement gained support. This movement aimed to provide students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes required of individuals who were prepared to assert their rights and accept their responsibilities as full and active members of society. It was spearheaded by Bernard Crick, who subsequently chaired the advisory group established in 1997 by New Labour. (This led to the establishment of the citizenship curriculum in its current form.) The continued influence of a lack of tradition in political education limited the ability of the political literacy movement to influence school practice on a widespread basis. It was replaced by a far more radical agenda.

In the 1980s, political literacy was superseded by a variety of issues-based subjects such as ‘peace education’, ‘anti-racist education’, ‘anti-sexist education’ and ‘world studies’. Although originally united in their commitment to social justice, these movements came under heavy attack amid claims of political indoctrination from key anti-progressive members of the New Right. Therefore, they were omitted from the National Curriculum framework that was established after the Education Reform Act of 1988.

In the early 1990s, mainly due to the campaigning of pro-citizenship pressure groups such as the Citizenship Foundation, citizenship education secured a place as one of five non-statutory cross-curricular themes that schools were advised to teach, in parallel with the statutory ‘core’ subjects. Research suggested, however, that schools were generally ignoring these themes and they were disregarded as part of the first review of the National Curriculum in 1994. Ongoing campaigning from pressure groups and rising public fears concerning an apparent erosion of the moral fabric of society (following, in particular, high-profile news stories such as the murder of James Bulger) managed to keep citizenship education on the political agenda. Policymakers increasingly saw citizenship education as part of the solution to the many problems facing society, such as rising crime rates, social exclusion and political apathy.

When New Labour came to power in May 1997, the Education Secretary, David Blunkett, immediately set up an advisory group, chaired by Professor Bernard Crick, to provide recommendations on the establishment of a formal programme of citizenship education in English and Welsh schools. The Crick Report is the final report of this advisory group. The recommendations in the report were broadly accepted and the end result is that citizenship became a statutory National Curriculum subject at Key Stages 3 and 4 in August 2002. This statutory framework is complemented by non-statutory guidelines for PSHE and citizenship that came into effect in August 2001.