When your children come home from school and tell you that they had Maths, or French or Science today, you probably have a good idea about what they have been studying. Citizenship is different. Some people do not know what it is, because the subject has only appeared on the curriculum in recent years.

 

“What is a Citizen?” Is it just a legally recognised person in a country? Amazingly, there are some 6.4 billion global citizens and each individual is unique, with different needs, wants, ideas, beliefs and aspirations. Whether it is being part of our own family, our school, our local community, our club, our town, city or country, the European Community or the world, we are all citizens and we all have responsibilities towards every other citizen, as well as rights.

 

So, we teach one lesson of Citizenship per week to all students in Years 8-11 and we enter all KS4 students for the OCR Short Course GCSE. We are very proud of our results, but even more importantly, we hope that we have taught our students what it means to be caring, committed, well- balanced, honest and responsible active citizens. We love teaching the subject because it is so relevant to young people’s lives and we have lots of opportunities to discuss sometimes controversial issues. Here are some of the topics covered in our lessons:-

 

“Britishness ,“ asylum and migration, refugees, fair trade, racism, globalisation, laws, Parliament, local government, criminal justice, drugs, smoking, alcohol, sex and relationships, peer pressure, education, consumer rights, discrimination, family, media, employment, inequality, world religions, managing the economy, voting, older people ……