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Michael Grimes: So then what should Labour do? When I spoke
to Stephen Twigg he strongly supported citizenship education, but he did not go as saying that
the government should keep its national statutory curriculum; that is, with a programme of study
and assessment criteria. So what promises would you like to hear from the Shadow Education
Secretary?
David Blunkett: Well I'd like an imaginative approach from
the opposition, from my own party, which says: 'Look, by 2014 the majority of secondary schools
will be academies, the National Curriculum is therefore not directly applicable, we will
have a silly situation where we pretend we have a national curriculum but we've effectively
disemboweled it it and great parts of it will no longer be required and other parts will
not be applicable to schools that have become Academies or Free Schools'. So what I'd like
to see is that there is a requirement on schools - as there would be for English, maths, science,
geography, history - to actually have a particular period in which they are expected to teach
citizenship and that Ofsted would have an obligation to inspect. And a schools would
find itself judged just as much by whether it's teaching citizenship and whether it's
teaching it effectively as they would from those subject areas that Michael Gove is committed
and minded to make part of the core curriculum. So we'd have a common-sense approach right
across the board; there's no point in having a core curriculum and a secondary curriculum
if most of your schools don't have to follow the curriculum. They'd certainly have to follow
outcomes in terms of what was expected of them in terms of inspection and the way in
which the school was judged, and there would be a national framework which schools could
draw down on so that the most up-to-date materials and lesson plans could be shared so that teacher
training was undertaken on an effective basis, rather than believing that somehow somewhere
another subject teacher with a particular specialism can maybe for a small part of every
week suddenly become the citizenship teaher: it just doesn't work that way. And I am a
trained teacher, I did a post-graduate certificate; as well as being Education Secretary I did
teach: I understand very well what happens if you don't require that there is at least
some outcome measure and that outcome measure is measured.
Michael Grimes: Can we expect that then? If the current government
takes citizenship off the national curriculum, will the next Labour government put it back
on?
David Blunkett: Well I shall press very hard that the next
Labour government provides for citizenship teaching the same requirements that it provides
for other key subject areas ranging from English and maths through science, geography and history.
In other words: that there is an expected outcome, that there is a measurable progress
that has to be made, that there is proper investment in training and that we do ensure
that materials, lesson plans and the best that's on offer is made available in a way
that encourages schools to use it.