Education for citizenship, diversity and “Britishness” 1997-2007

International audienceAlongside sweeping constitutional reforms the first New Labour government introduced compulsory education for citizenship. The preparatory Crick Report (1998) proposed a model that would explore rather than define national identity. Following the 1999 Macpherson Report, that identified institutional racism in public services, citizenship education was intended to ensure the curriculum reflects a diverse British society. However there has been little pressure from inspectors for schools to implement this. Post 9/11 and 7/7 the government’s security agenda expects citizenship education to promote ‘community cohesion’. Gordon Brown articulated concerns to create common understandings of ‘Britishness’ which led to a curriculum review Diversity and Citizenship (2007) proposing a new theme ‘Identity and Diversity : Living Together in the UK’ to be included from 2008. Whilst this is uncontroversial, there are still political struggles around how it may be conceived and implemented