Educational influences on young people's support for fundamental British values

Abstract

In 2014 the British government called on schools to actively promote fundamental British values (FBVs), seeing this as an effective way to prevent the radicalisation of young people. The government considers these values to include democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law and respect for people of different backgrounds and religions. Rather than criticising this policy on theoretical or ideological grounds, as many studies have done, the current article aims to ascertain support for the values labelled as fundamentally British among 23 year olds in England and to assess whether levels of support are associated with educational attainment and distinct educational practices experienced earlier in life. Data from the Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study (CELS) are analysed for these purposes. A multidimensional measure of FBVs is constructed based on policy understandings of the term rather than statistical considerations. The article finds that levels of support for FBVs among 23 year olds are already very high and do not differ between the White British majority and various minority ethnic groups, although the small sample sizes of the latter do not allow for strong conclusions about these differences. Among the educational conditions, educational attainment and particularly track attended appears to be the only influential condition, with those obtaining academic qualifications showing significantly higher support for FBVs than those achieving vocational ones. Adding this variable to the model neutralises the effects of specific programmes or pedagogies experienced during lower secondary, such as citizenship education, an open climate of classroom discussion or school‐based political activities.

The impact of the Prevent duty on schools: A review of the evidence

“…Ultimately, given that students are already very likely to support the government's list of FBVs (Janmaat, ) and exceedingly unlikely to support political violence for any reason (Jerome & Elwick, ), our review of the research indicates that the Prevent duty may well be having a series of unnecessary and unintended effects, which are threatening long‐established policies tackling racism, promoting equalities and supporting community cohesion. There is evidence that teachers and school leaders may exercise their agency to challenge or minimise these negative side‐effects, but with approximately half a million teachers in England, it seems unlikely that we can rely on them all individually to respond to this challenge.…”

“…By contrast, Janmaat's () research takes a rather different approach and reanalyses a longitudinal data set of 420 young people collected throughout their secondary education, until they were 22 years of age. He builds a measure of support for the FBVs by compiling items from an international civics survey.…”

Student Perspectives on Teaching and the Prevent Policy

“…In addition Green (2017) conducted three focus groups with Muslim teenagers, which included some discussion of their experiences of school and college. We have also identified one relevant secondary study in which Janmaat (2018) re-analysed existing data from 420 young people for evidence of their knowledge of, and support for, the FBVs. Given that there are over 12 million people below the age of 18 in the UK, we cannot claim to provide a reliable overview of the situation for all children and young people, especially given the small research base on which we are able to draw.…”

Type of education and civic and political attitudes

“…Hoskins and Janmaat () found that in England, both the level and type of educational pathways pursued from the age of 14 have an independent correlation with reported voting and protesting at age 19–20. Janmaat () in fact finds that type of education matters more than level of education for several democratic and civic values for 23‐year‐olds in England. Finally, Geboers et al .…”