Rob Pope is a founder of Active Citizens FE. Previously he worked on the LSIS Post-16 Citizenship Support Programme and has considerable experience as a teacher and manager in further education. He recently joined the ACT Council to represent the interests of the FE sector.
Projects - These involve young people in undertaking projects on issues of interest to them. They often involve research but may have a range of outcomes in the form of music, art or video. These may or may not contribute to a qualification. Policy context and funding cuts: threats to post-16 Citizenship The closure in 2011 of the government funded Post-16 Citizenship Support Programme represented a serious loss of free staff training, resources and policy direction for Citizenship in further education. It is detrimental that, in national policy, there is no longer an explicit endorsement of the value of citizenship education in the postcompulsory sector to encourage and support those making decisions about the offer to students and the allocation of resources in colleges and other providers. Further, to compound this difficult policy context, the impact of funding cuts is beginning to be felt in further education. Government announcements have made clear that over the next four years the sector will bear a proportionally higher level of spending cuts than any other within education, added to which some areas of reduction have particularly worrying implications for Citizenship provision. One immediate example concerns the 75% cut (114 hours per learner reduced to 30) in ‘Entitlement’ funding, which all further education providers receive for each full-time learner, and covers areas including pastoral tutorial support and ‘extracurricular’ enrichment activities. These are all important ‘spaces’ where many colleges and other providers have located Citizenship programmes and activities related to learner voice and representation. Commenting on the cut to Entitlement funding, Eddie Playfair, Principal of Newham Sixth Form College maintains: “The massive cut to entitlement funding is a real threat to vital tutorial and enrichment work in colleges. We will be forced to consider the future of important programmes which promote the development of students’ skills and their wider contribution to the community.” Another Principal, Ian Millard, of Wolverhampton College strikes a similar
note, commenting: ‘We believe our students need to be skills ready (through appropriate qualifications), work ready (through developing the right attitude and approach to work) and citizen ready (to play their full part in their communities and the wider society. Our learning programmes are designed to support these three equally important priorities. The challenge we face going forward is how to maintain our priorities given pressures on loss of entitlement funding’. The hope is that such committed practitioners and providers will find new ways to continue supporting Citizenship activity as well as the wider enrichment curriculum. One option is likely to be the replacement of some non-accredited programmes and activities with long or short funded qualifications with Citizenship content. Certainly many practitioners are keen to come together to consolidate progress made in the last ten years and think about the best ways forward, as reflected in interest in Active Citizens FE, a new national network for post-16 Citizenship.
In national policy, there is no longer an explicit endorsement of the value of Citizenship education in the postcompulsory sector
Active Citizens FE With the closure of the Post-16 Citizenship Support Programme this new non-funded network has been set up to facilitate continued collaboration between post-16 Citizenship practitioners and access to relevant news, resources and training. The Network aims to: • Promote excellence and innovation in learning for effective democratic participation and social action • Campaign at all levels for the further development of post-16 citizenship education • Offer members a range of opportunities and services including: networking and sharing; learning resources; events; training; special projects; and a regular e-bulletin. For further details of Active Citizens FE contact Rob Pope, Bernadette Joslin and Helen Wiles at info@activecitizensfe.org.uk or see www.activecitizensfe.org.uk. ▪ 1. For an exploration of the links between learner voice and post-16 citizenship see Rob Pope and Bernadette Joslin, Improving Quality, Developing Citizens: Learner Voice in Post-Compulsory Education and Training in Gerry Czerniawski and Warren Kidd, The Student Voice Handbook: Bridging the Academic/Practitioner Divide, Emerald, Bingley, 2011.
www.teachingcitizenship.org.uk / Summer 2012 / Issue 33 / Teaching Citizenship / 31