Introduction

This chapter is about English education and its democratic deficit, although, when data specific to England is unavailable, the chapter draws on UK-level data. However, it is important to point out that England is increasingly an outlier relative to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a more fragmented and privatised educational system that has left many teachers, pupils and parents feeling powerless in the face of rapid educational policy changes. As Tim Brighouse (2017), former London schools commissioner, asserted: ‘England remains the poor relation of the four nations with its centralised system and weakened local government. If a sense of powerlessness is the enemy of democracy, England is more at risk than the other three countries.’

In England political education is something to be avoided. Throughout their schooling young people are rarely taught about politics. Instead, they are provided with a citizenship education where the focus is often on a depoliticised curriculum of personal ‘responsibilisation’ that concentrates on building character and social capital rather than political literacy and active citizenship (Kisby, 2017; Weinberg and Flinders, 2018). This creates what Conover and Searing (2000, p 108) call ‘a privately orientated, passive understanding of citizenship’. The emphasis is placed on individual social and moral responsibility through volunteering and charitable giving rather than any active political engagement (Osler and Starkey, 2001; Power et al, 2021). One consequence is a lack of confidence in governments to address citizens’ needs, and a belief that charities rather than the state are better at meeting people's needs. This could be viewed as a neoliberalising of citizenship education that encourages ad hoc individual action rather than collective political engagement. Involvement is primarily seen in terms of charitable giving and volunteering rather than actual political participation.

Recent research (DfE, 2022) found that even this anaemic form of citizenship education failed to reach a significant minority of English secondary school students; 24 per cent reported weekly lessons in citizenship education, while a further quarter had never received a lesson. The school workforce census of 2020 reported that only 16 per cent of the 2,876 schools surveyed had a trained citizenship education teacher (DfE, 2022).