Conflicting concepts of participation in secondary school Citizenship

This paper examines a rare response by Ofsted to academics’ concerns about a prevailing compliance model of Citizenship in secondary schools. Ofsted’s defence of a non‐compliance model is then tested against a small sample of Ofsted inspection data. The limited evidence suggests that Ofsted’s defence is undermined by the adoption of an instrumentalist approach to participation, driven by the school improvement agenda, and, it is argued, reinforced by the Every Child Matters agenda. The outcome of this approach, which promotes an uncritical concept of participation, is an uncoupling of the political, moral and community that lay at the heart of the Crick Report. Parallels are drawn with the late‐nineteenth‐century compliance model of Citizenship, which Ofsted claim in their defence is very different from the twenty‐first‐century participatory model. There follows a review of political change since the Crick Report, which suggests that lack of participation by young people—which is the premise of both that ...