Introduction
This toolkit aims to help you assess the provision of citizenship education across your whole organisation. It provides you with self-assessment tools which give you feedback on your strengths and areas for improvement. Where you wish to develop your provision, making the organisation 'citizenship-rich', it supplies information, suggestions and links to other guidance on the Post-16 citizenship website (1).
An Ofsted report, Citizenship established? (January 2010), looks at citizenship provision in primary and secondary schools and post-16. The report refers to good practice visits to post-16 providers revealing a ‘rich and varied range of opportunities for citizenship’ and also highlights the value placed in resources and support available from LSIS for post-16 citizenship. It says this support has been ‘instrumental in bringing about improvement through topical and attractive resources and specialist guidance’. The report signals growing recognition across the sector of the benefits of citizenship education for learners and their organisations.
You can also explore how citizenship can support key policy drivers within your organisation by clicking on the links to right ('How can citizenship help us do better?').
How can citizenship help us do better?
Developing skills
Helping to raise achievement and aspiration
- Broadening learning and enrichment
- Every Child Matters and the Common Inspection Framework
- Providing further qualifications and the skills required for HE
Improving relationships in our organisation and community
- Learner voice
- Diversity, equality and inclusion
- Community cohesion
- Global citizenship
- Prevention of violent extremism
- The Big Society and National Citizen Service
Motivating young people to learn and stay in learning
Getting the most from this toolkit
The toolkit contains a number of different sections and assets designed to help you with citizenship. The next page, 'How to' describes all of the assets and how you might use them. The 'What is citizenship' page describes what we mean by citizenship and is probably a good place to start. At the bottom of each page we have put a signpost that suggests what you might want to look at next in the e-toolkit.
(1). The ‘citizenship-rich’ concept was developed by Tony Breslin at the Citizenship Foundation, the independent education and participation charity. We are also very grateful to Julia Fiehn and to MLM Learning for their work on the production of this resource.
What to do next?
- Find out what we mean by citizenship and see examples of it in practice - 'What is citizenship'
- Read the 'Get started' guide to see how you can use this toolkit to help with citizenship within your organisation - 'Get started'
- Jump straight in and try out the self-assessment tool that will give you a report to use in your organisation - 'Self-assessment'
- Take a look at the list of policy drivers that can benefit from citizenship (top right of this page)- 'Policy drivers'
- Why not talk to your colleagues about citizenship and send them a link to this resource
Don’t forget to look at the Post-16 citizenship programme website for more information, links to other organisations and resources.