Liberty’s submission to the Department of
Education’s consultation on Reform of the
National Curriculum in England
April 2013
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About Liberty
Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties) is one of the UK’s leading civil liberties and
human rights organisations. Liberty works to promote human rights and protect civil liberties
through a combination of test case litigation, lobbying, campaigning and research.
Liberty Policy
Liberty provides policy responses to Government consultations on all issues which have
implications for human rights and civil liberties. We also submit evidence to Select
Committees, Inquiries and other policy fora, and undertake independent, funded research.
Liberty’s policy papers are available at
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/publications/1-policy-papers/index.shtml
Contact
Isabella Sankey
Rachel Robinson
Director of Policy
Policy Officer
Direct Line 020 7378 5254
Direct Line: 020 7378 3659
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]
Sophie Farthing
Policy Officer
Direct Line 020 7378 3654
Email: [email protected]
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Introduction
1. Liberty welcomes the opportunity to submit our views on the Reform of the National
Curriculum for English based schools.1 In this submission we address one area of the draft
curriculum: Citizenship. We believe that this subject area has unnecessarily and mistakenly
excluded specific reference to human rights and fundamental freedoms and we urge the
Department of Education to include these concepts expressly in the finalised curriculum.
2. In this submission we draw on our expertise and experience in human rights and in
speaking and engaging with young people about democracy and the values that underpin it.
For some time Liberty has been concerned that there has been a gap in students’ learning
around human rights, leaving them open to gaining understanding – or rather
misunderstanding - of these concepts only through a populist media that has a selfacknowledged interest in seeking the repeal of human rights protections.2 Given the
importance of human rights in British history and in sustaining our democracy, it is
unsurprising that Liberty’s school education pack on human rights (which includes a
historical timeline of human rights in Britain, an explanation of what human rights are and
information on the articled Convention rights) has been so well received.3 In the last 12
months this online resource pack has been viewed more than 11,600 times and downloaded
1,500 times. Our related school children’s writing competition, Write Human Rights,4 has
similarly been received with overwhelming enthusiasm. Nearly 130 primary and second
schools from across the country registered to participate in the writing competition in early
2011. We received over 196 entries, with finalists selected by our judging panel consisting of
authors Ali Smith, Georgia Byng and Antony Horrowitz, Liberty’s Director and, chairing the
panel, Penguin publisher Simon Prosser. We received a huge amount of positive feedback
on the competition and materials from teachers, pupils and schools; as one teacher stated,
“The children I worked with really enjoyed the opportunity and wrote some pretty powerful
stuff. Children always get it right don’t they!”. Another stated, “Thank you very much for
providing young people with this opportunity to think about their human rights. I am a
1
Department for Education The National Curriculum in England: Framework document for
consultation (February 2013), available at
https://www.education.gov.uk/consultations/index.cfm?action=consultationDetails&consultationId=188
1&external=no&menu=1
2
See for example, a speech made in 2008 to the Society of Editors by Daily Mail Editor, Paul Dacre,
available at http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/node/42394.
3
See Liberty’s Human Rights Resource Pack, available at http://www.liberty-humanrights.org.uk/materials/schools-resource-pack.pdf.
4
For further information see http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/campaigns/commonvalues/common-values-in-our-classrooms/write-human-rights/index.php.
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creative writing teacher… It is humbling to listen to what our children have to say about the
way they experience the world…”.
3. In this short briefing we outline why we believe express reference to human rights
should be a teaching requirement for English pupils. Human rights are a fundamental part of
British democracy, shaping both our history and significantly influencing modern day British
society. Education about rights and freedoms is vital at any time, but especially at a time
when political and media debate increasingly seeks to devalue these important societal
underpinnings and reporting on human rights issues is so frequently inaccurate. If we are
striving for our youth to leave school as responsible citizens, tolerant of others and keen to
actively participate in democracy, teaching them about the evolution of our human rights
framework and its underpinning values – of human dignity, autonomy of the individual and
non-discrimination – is absolutely vital. Accordingly we urge the Department to include – as it
did in the 2007 curriculum – explicit reference to human rights in the new curriculum.
Proposals in the draft Curriculum
4. Section 78 of the Education Act 2002 sets out the statutory requirements for a
school’s curriculum, stating it must:

promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils
at the school and of society; and

prepare pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and
experiences of later life.
The proposed new Curriculum covers a number of core subjects; within each subject area
proposed programmes of study and attainment targets are set out in ‘Key Stages’ to match a
pupil’s development. The curriculum includes broad principled statements of core learning,
leaving teachers with sufficient ambit within those statements to tailor their classes to the
specific needs of their students.
5. The “Citizenship” subject area of the draft curriculum is intended to ensure students
become equipped “with knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare them to play a full
and active part in society”.5 Among the aims of the subject area is to ensure that students
understand how the UK “is governed, its political system and how citizens participate actively
in its democratic systems of government”.6 Under subject content, Key Stage 3 requires
pupils to be taught about “the precious liberties enjoyed by the citizens of the United
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6
Proposed Curriculum, at page 149.
Ibid.
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Kingdom”. Key Stage 4 requires more in depth analysis of democracy, including the role of
Parliament in government accountability and the “diverse national, regional, religious and
ethnic identities in the United Kingdom and the need for mutual respect and understanding”.7
The importance of including express reference to human rights in the curriculum
6. In the 2007 curriculum on “Citizenship”, it was expressly provided that teaching the
subject must address “issues relating to social justice, human rights, community cohesion
and global interdependence” and encourage “students to challenge injustice, inequalities
and discrimination”.8 Human rights has been removed from the proposed new curriculum;
instead Key Stage 3 only refers to the “precious liberties” British “citizens” enjoy and the
need for “mutual respect and understanding” of the diverse national, regional, religious and
ethnic identities in the UK. It is highly regrettable that the proposed curriculum excludes the
former reference to human rights, narrows teaching to citizens’ liberties rather than universal
rights and freedoms and removes reference to challenging injustice. For the reasons given
below, we believe it will be detrimental to students’ learning to remove express reference to
these concepts and we recommend the Department make it explicit on the face of the
document that these concepts must be taught.
7. Our human rights protections are also integral to many of the concepts included in
the “Citizenship” subject area. Our human rights framework is one of the foundational
structures by which the relationship between the State and the individual is governed. The
European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA), which
incorporates it into domestic law, protects the individual from undue interference by the State
and equips individuals to hold Government, their elected representatives and public
agencies to account. Liberty clients Richard and Gillian Rabone, for example, recently relied
upon the HRA to clarify that mental health hospitals owe a duty of care to all patients,
including those voluntarily in their care. Their fight followed the suicide of their mentally ill
daughter, Melanie, who had been negligently released from hospital following selfadmission.9 Similarly Liberty client, Verna Bryant, used the HRA to expose multiple failings
across the probation and prison services following the bungled release on licence of a
convicted sex offender who assaulted and murdered her daughter.10 Accordingly, given Key
7
Ibid, at page 150.
See the 2007 Curriculum, available at
http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/q/citizenship%202007%20programme%20of%20study
%20for%20key%20stage%204.pdf.
9
See http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/news/2013/my-hra-richard-and-gillian-rabone.php.
10
See http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/news/2013/my-hra-verna-bryant.php.
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Stage 4 will focus on Government accountability it is vital that teaches be required to equip
students with the practical knowledge of how this actually happens, other than by reference
to elections which form just one part of democratic accountability.
8. Further, looking across other subject areas, it becomes clear that excluding reference
to the human rights framework illogically ignores a vital development in modern British
democracy. The History subject area requires school curriculum to include many events
which directly led to the HRA and which are embodied within it. It includes key milestones in
the Human Rights movement, from the Magna Carta and the French Revolution and the
Rights of Man, to the suffragette movement, the evils of the Holocaust and modern day anti
race discrimination legislation. Failure to mention the European Convention on Human
Rights and its domestic embodiment is simply to leave out how these earlier events
culminated in modern history. It also sidesteps an historical legacy which the curriculum
requires to be taught - “how the British people shaped this nation and how Britain influenced
the world”11 and Britain’s relations with Europe, the Commonwealth and other countries. For
example, it is unfortunate that the curriculum pays no heed to the highly influential role of
Britain in the reconstruction and democratisation of post-WWII Europe – of which the
establishment of a human rights framework was a fundamental part.
9. Liberty also believes it is vital for students to gain not only an understanding of British
diversity, as required in the draft curriculum, but also become equipped with the skills to
bring that understanding into practice in their everyday interaction with others as British
citizens. Teaching human rights as a concept requires not only teaching students about a
protective legal framework, but about what human rights constitutes – respect for human
dignity, compassionate interaction with others in society, tolerance and respect for difference
and different views. The human rights framework also provides students a context in which it
is possible to understand how the inevitable clashes in a democracy between different
interests can be balanced and accommodated – such as the tension between the rights of
free speech and privacy, or the balancing of non-discrimination and religious freedom.
Knowledge of the means by which such conflicts can be accommodated - through concepts
such as proportionality - will assist students in their everyday encounters at school, at home
and in their communities.
10. Finally, while the reason for excluding human rights from the school curriculum is
unclear, Liberty hopes that contemporaneous, politically partisan, debate about human rights
has not been a relevant consideration. Current hostility in some sectors of the media and
11
See the history strand of the curriculum, ibid, at page 166.
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from certain Conservative politicians should not detract from the importance of human rights
and civil liberties protection in historic, current and future British democratic society. It is
clear that political hostility to human rights in recent years is driven by a variety of factors,
from vested interests that believe they will gain from a dilution of rights protection to the
economic troubles of the Eurozone. It is also clear that much of the hostility is built on
unsound reasoning based on myth and misunderstanding of a small number of human rights
cases. The frequent presentation of human rights in such a negative way makes it all the
more important that students are given the opportunity to learn and explore the concepts
while at school. That is not to say that present political debate over the future of human
rights protection should be excluded from human rights teaching. Indeed different views
about the state of human rights protection in the UK could certainly be incorporated into
students’ learning in addition to factual teaching about how human rights protections have
evolved and are applied in the UK. If students do not learn about human rights in a teaching
environment, they will learn the highly politicised and frequently misinformed messages
which emerge from media headlines, and (sadly) on occasion from some of our most senior
Ministers and MPs. Liberty believes that it is vital that rather than learning about human
rights in this way, future citizens will be better equipped by learning as students the facts
about human rights and their domestic and international history. It will only be by including
them expressly in the curriculum that the Department will be able to ensure this is done.
Sophie Farthing
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