OUGD505 - Studio Brief 02 - Political Education in the UK

In the UK, stage 1 pupils learn about citizenship, where they learn about themselves as developing individuals and are made aware of social communities and society as well as building on their own experience of social and emotional development. They are taught to be aware of their own and other people's feelings as well as the views, needs and rights of other children and older people. They learn to take care of their well being and the importance of sharing, kindness and how to resolve simple arguments and discussions.

This programme is non-statutory and so schools are under no obligation to teach the pupils this, although it is encouraged to build on it with their own curriculum. The idea of this education strategy is to start to make children aware of politics and its importance by slowly introducing it. The issue is however, that because it is non-staturoy, often schools do not attempt to grow on this learning or develop it throughout school years and some do not even attempt to teach it to the children in the first place.

I took a survey from 19 students on my course asking them simply, if they learnt about politics in school and the results are shocking. 15 of the 19 students that took part in this survey said that they did not take part in any political education whilst at school.

This demonstrates the lack of education through schools, not just at key stage 1. The education should be continued throughout the whole of education, and although some students said this particular citizenship course was touched on, but not to the point that any knowledge on the current political affairs was focussed on.

In an article by Kate Crowhurst in the Telegraph, she makes the argument that young people tend to be disengaged with politics by the time they are 18. In 2005, only 28% of 18-24 year olds voted compared to the 65% of 18-24 year olds in 1964. This is because politicians don't engage with young people as well as they could. The concept of bringing a political education into primary and secondary schools and not continuing it beyond lower education has no effect if it isn't being touched on at secondary level or higher level education. This article does argue for the value of a political education curriculum and refutes the citizenship curriculum that is currently in place and calls it "patchy and inconsistent".

Sources:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/402173/Programme_of_Study_KS1_and_2.pdf
https://www.teachingcitizenship.org.uk/about-citizenship/citizenship-curriculum/primary-curriculum
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/11383651/Young-people-need-a-meaningful-education-in-politics.html