Emily Board is a Constitution Society Research Fellow. Her report: ‘Building Constitutional Literacy in Schools to Empower Future Citizens’ is available to read in full at: https://consoc.org.uk/publications/building-constitutional-literacy/
Young people in England want to learn more about democracy, as I heard first-hand while researching my new report on constitutional literacy for the Constitution Society. Data suggests that a minority of young people in English secondary schools benefit from regular teaching on the core legal, political and civic knowledge which makes up our constitution, though. This knowledge is essential for informed democratic participation. Its relative absence is despite it being specified in the National Curriculum at key stages 3 and 4 (ages 11 – 16) as part of Citizenship, a compulsory foundation subject since 2002.
Constitutional literacy can be defined as incorporating political, legal and civic knowledge, where civic knowledge means an understanding of how and where to apply political and legal knowledge to work towards a desired goal. Fostering constitutional literacy in young people is therefore crucial to sustaining a healthy, participative democracy and in promoting social cohesion.
My report for the Constitution Society explores how the core compulsory curriculum in England supports young peoples’ acquisition of foundational political and legal political knowledge. It suggests that some English secondary schools systematically develop pupils’ democratic knowledge and skills through regular taught sessions as part of the core curriculum. Some of these schools also provide opportunities to practise these skills through extra- and co-curricular activities such as participation in school councils and mock elections. But the bigger picture is of inconsistent and sometimes poor provision. My report highlights that socio-economically disadvantaged young people are less likely to be taught core democratic knowledge and skills or to have in-school opportunities to practise them. 75% of teachers who contributed to our research told us that young people don’t currently have enough such opportunities during the compulsory phase of schooling. Nationally, access to constitutional education is largely left to chance, often sporadic rather than systematic. Such provision is contingent on the efforts and personal interest of individual teachers and school leaders with support from third-sector organisations.
With global democracy appearing increasingly fragile and trust in government within the UK as low as it has ever been, in England there is a pressing need for the government to act to strengthen citizenship education in schools. We must ensure that all pupils access their entitlement to constitutional knowledge as set out in the Citizenship teaching requirements.
At present, an independent panel led by Professor Becky Francis CBE is undertaking a Curriculum and Assessment Review, due to report in autumn 2025. While academies presently have greater autonomy than maintained schools in following their own curricula, significantly, following the review, all state schools and academies will be expected to teach the national curriculum. And the government has indicated that it intends to move ahead with its manifesto pledge to extend the right to vote to 16 and 17 year olds before the next General Election. Taken together, these developments emphasise the pressing need for all young people to be ready for active democratic participation by the end of compulsory schooling.
The current National Curriculum programme of study for Citizenship requires that young people aged 11-16 are taught essential foundational knowledge of our legal and political systems, vital to enabling them to engage in democracy as active citizens. This knowledge includes, for example, at key stage 3 (ages 11-14), ‘the operation of Parliament, including voting and elections, and the role of political parties’; and at key stage 4 (ages 14-16), ‘parliamentary democracy and key elements of the constitution of the United Kingdom including the power of government, the role of citizens and Parliament in holding those in power to account, and the different roles of the executive, legislature and judiciary and a free press’. However, as my report argues, many learners do not receive sufficient quantity or quality of citizenship education to meet statutory requirements. There has been no official national data on teaching and learning in Citizenship since the last Ofsted subject report published in 2013. This lack of official monitoring is emblematic of the marginalisation of Citizenship as a curriculum subject over the last decade. Uptake of the GCSE Citizenship Studies qualification has also declined: just 21,535 pupils took the qualification in summer 2024, down from a peak of over 90,000 in 2010. Yet the GCSE course represents perhaps the only opportunity for in-depth, sustained and assessed engagement with constitutional knowledge in a formal academic setting within the 11-16 age range, and it was highly valued by teachers and pupils that I spoke to in the course of my research.
Regular, discrete Citizenship lessons continued up to age 16 have been shown to be associated with better outcomes for learners and promoting democratic engagement in later life, and my report includes powerful examples of engaging and locally-responsive teaching by well-trained Citizenship specialists. Yet many young peoples’ experience of in-school citizenship education is a series of sporadic and disparate episodes encountered across PSHE lessons, assemblies, drop-down days and tutor times, often delivered by hard-pressed non-specialist teachers who haven’t had training in teaching about the technicalities of the UK’s political institutions, systems and uncodified constitution. Unsurprisingly, such teachers often lack confidence when teaching these topics.
So what can be done? I argue in my report that active democratic engagement should be placed at the heart of the reformed national curriculum and publicly signalled by the government as a priority for schools.
All pupils should have a statutory entitlement to discrete curricular citizenship provision across key stages 3 and 4, to include at least 6 hours per year of constitutional education. National curriculum requirements must be monitored and resourced appropriately to ensure that all pupils receive their entitlement, supporting inclusive democratic participation.
The Curriculum and Assessment Review panel recently published an interim report which articulates the key principles and approaches that will inform the next stage of the review. This followed its initial phase of evidence-gathering which resulted in submissions by over 7000 individuals and organisations, alongside regional roadshows and round-table meetings. Encouragingly, the interim report identifies ‘fostering responsible citizenship in a democratic society’ as one of the three goals of the national curriculum, and moreover highlights its important function of ‘promoting social cohesion and sustaining democracy’. Amidst a continued emphasis on ‘knowledge-rich’ teaching, it emphasises teachers’ vital role as ‘curriculum-makers’ who bring the curriculum to life by making it relevant to the needs of their students and local communities.
The review’s clearly stated approach is one of ‘evolution not revolution’ – incremental change which preserves what works whilst applying evidence-based solutions to the most pressing problems. The foundational legal and political knowledge that young people must acquire by the end of compulsory schooling is already set out in the Citizenship national curriculum, but evidence suggests that too many miss out on opportunities to access it – particularly socio-economically disadvantaged young people. With pupils currently in the lower years of English secondary schools expected to be casting their votes as 16 year olds in the next UK General Election, we must ensure that all young people are informed and empowered to participate in our democracy. To do this, we must give teachers discrete, regular space in the timetable to foster their students’ vital understanding of representative democracy in the UK.
Emily Board.
Emily gained her undergraduate degree in history from the University of Cambridge, before spending several years as a parliamentary assistant. She trained as a history teacher and was Head of History in an 11-18 comprehensive in Surrey and, more recently, Programme Leader for Politics in a state sixth form college in Sussex. Emily is a Constitution Society research fellow.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.