Before the Citizenship Order: a survey of citizenship education practice in England.

In the context of an international trend toward the renewal of citizenship teaching, this paper reports the results of a survey of citizen education practice in Hertfordshire, England, carried out in June 2000. The research aims to find out if the practice in schools was as negligible as conventional wisdom and existing research suggest. We find out that only 8% of schools claimed not to be doing anything at all; about 17% delivered citizenship as a discrete subject; most schools offered extra-curricular activities which contributed to citizenship education; 80% of mainstream schools provided at least some coverage of most topics; just under 80% of the mainstream schools designated someone to co-ordinate citizenship education; and about one-third (32%) of schools thought citizenship education should be devised at the discretion of each school. Overall the findings convey the diversity of practices, which do not co-vary with the type of school. Our results suggest a more autonomist conception of citizen education practice than that advocated by the English central government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]