Citizenship Curriculum

Overview

Citizenship education at St Clement’s seeks to provide students with knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare them to play a full and active part in society.

At St Clement’s we aim to encourage, develop and promote a keen awareness and understanding of democracy, government and how laws are made and upheld. This applies on many levels; with focus on democracy in school via the School Council, local, national and global politics. All students are encouraged both within the curriculum and in extra-curricular opportunities to debate and make reasoned arguments based on evidence and a range of opinions. This helps prepare our students to take their place in society as responsible, well-rounded and well informed active citizens.

Key Stage 3

Key Stage Three Citizenship focuses on ensuring that all students have the basic knowledge, understanding and skills in order to become young and engaged active citizens. With an initial focus on an ‘Introduction to Politics’ students become familiar with their in-school representatives, building on prior knowledge of school council from KS2 as well as learning about locally elected representatives. This is developed into Y8 focusing of further detail related to the Government, Cabinet and MPs. Students learn about active citizenship through their study of the ‘People and the Environment’ and ‘Debating important issues’ where students are tasked with looking into the issues surrounding freedom of speech.

Key Stage 4

In KS4, students take a more critical and thorough approach to learning about democracy, government, British values and how to be an active participant in our modern British society. We aim to develop the enthusiasm, intrigue and political engagement that students discover in KS3 and choose to pursue into KS4. Students learn about the intricate workings UK Parliament, accountability, human rights and civil liberties, key features of a democracy and well as how the justice system links. Bringing all parts of the KS4 curriculum together, is the continued development of discovering how young people can be active citizens and can become young advocates in their local, national and global community. It is important that students develop active citizenship skills which will help them become active citizens for life, not just for their time at St Clement’s.