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ACT membership provides an outstanding opportunity for professional development.

Members of ACT:

Keep their subject & professional knowledge up to date through newsletters, journals, CPD etc
Receive specialist advice to support their teaching,
Can attend regional ACT-accredited CPD free of charge,
Have networking opportunities with discounts on regional & national ACT workshops and conferences.

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Back to School

Use today’s news to teach Citizenship, bringing your lessons bang up to date

Use Youtube, newspapers, filmclips and websites to bring current affairs and Citizenship lessons alive.

This month ACT has two lesson suggestions for you on the Labour leadership contest and the allegations of cheating in international cricket.

Your pupils will prefer to talk about something that’s happening now than something that happened two years ago when they were “young children”, but make sure you relate the news to your pupils’ lives!

Remember the importance statement from the Citizenship Curriculum "Citizenship encourages them [pupils] to take an interest in topical and controversial issues and to engage in discussion and debate."

> read more

All the latest citizenship news & info

Know your rights! HeadsUp forum 20 September - 8 October

03 September 2010

HeadsUp is the Citizenship programme run by the Hansard Society.

The next HeadsUp online forum - Citizen vs. the State...do you know your rights? - is the perfect opportunity to introduce your students to rights in an interactive and fun way...

Exemplifying the eight-level scale

03 September 2010

You can now view materials that exemplify achievement and progression in Citizenship education at KS3. Go to the National Curriculum website and you can see more on how to make overall assessment judgements from level 3 to level 8.

Updated news about the completion of the CPD Certificate 2009-10

01 September 2010

Candidates for the DfE Citizenship education CPD Certificate should be ready to hand in their portfolios on September 27th to their HEI tutor. The tutors for each region can be found on the ACT Regional pages.

Candidates should also be preparing to make their final presentations on a chosen aspect of Citizenship education to the rest of their group. Dates, times and places for these can be seen on the ACT regional pages. Presentations should be kept to 5 minutes in duration and cover a significant aspect of the subject-one that the candidate has ideally developed during the CPD course. Candidates should ensure copies of their presentation are available for other course members.

For more information on the Masters, expand this item.

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Forthcoming Conferences & Events

22 Sep 10

Poverty to Prosperity

Penrith CREA

29 Sep 10

Poverty to Prosperity

Preston

08 Oct 10

Tackling Global Poverty Together - Oxfam active global citizenship conference

London - The Holloway Resource Centre

08 Oct 10

PSHE Association workshop: working with young people who self-harm

CAN Mezzanine, 1 London Bridge, London SE1 9BG

11 Oct 10

Active Global Citizenship Conference

Liverpool University

12 Nov 10

Takeover Day

Nationwide

15 Nov 10

Primary teachers' event with ACT and PSHE Association1

British Library, London

19 Nov 10 - 20 Nov 10

Education and Citizenship in a Globalising World

Institute of Education, London

> browse all FORTHCOMING EVENTS

Ask the Experts - Your Questions Answered

Featured Question :-

A teacher recently said to me "My head teacher is a Citizenship education sceptic. What can I do to convince them that Citizenship is about school improvement and not a burden on teachers, the timetable or pupils?"

Millicent Scott

Lets start with the facts; Citizenship is a statutory subject at KS3 and 4, and may get a subject inspection by Ofsted. Student voice is part of a school’s self-evaluation form. Now go on to share the information below in an SLT or Governors meeting.

At the heart of new initiatives in education lies Citizenship; just look at the Big Picture diagram from QCA. The new secondary curriculum aims to develop young people who are successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens.

Citizenship builds Personal, Learning & Thinking Skills. Citizenship is an Opening Minds competency. Student voice is at the heart of Personalised Learning.

Citizenship can contribute to the major school policies, for example the Duty to Promote Community Cohesion. Making a positive contribution is central to Every Child Matters.

It is s a subject in its own right. There has been a short course Citizenship Studies GCSE since 2002, AS & A levels from 2008, and there will be a full course GCSE from 2009.

Citizenship pedagogy builds motivation and engagement and happiness! Research shows that students feel most ‘intellectually engaged’ when they have a say in their learning and do things that had an impact on the real world. The ‘World Expert on Happiness’ says happiness is “a sense of participation in determining the content of life.” It also supports human rights and democracy: “All children have the right to a say in all decisions that affect them.” so says Article 12, UN Convention on Rights of the Child.

It improves standards. A study of 12 ‘participative schools’, concluded that they achieved higher GCSE results and lower numbers of exclusion. A school in south east London achieved a 33% improvement in GCSE results after adopting Citizenship as a whole school initiative.

Citizenship’s Role is central in in transforming education. It is a subject which demands specialist teachers like all other subjects. It has a pedagogy charactised by student voice and action and it is more than a subject with the potential to transform the school ethos.

Chris Waller and Pete Pattisson, ACT

> read more Q&A FROM OUR EXPERTS