ACT is delighted to support a campaign launched by the Council of Europe, 'Free to Speak, Safe to Learn', which encouarges all schools to become 'Democratic Schools'.
Creating a Democratic Culture through high quality curriculum and teaching
The Council of Europe Competency Framework for Democratic Culture
The Council of Europe recently supported the Association for Citizenship Teaching (ACT) to lead a small project to consult with teachers in England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales about a competency framework developed to support education for democratic citizenship, human rights and intercultural understanding.
The Council of Europe has identified four key purposes of education:
Robert Jackson, visiting Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Education at Stockholm University, explores the inter-relationship between religion and belief, human rights and citizenship education.
John Hamer, Director of an educational consultancy and an expert consultant to the Council of Europe on history education, provides a substantial resource which has been developed by the Council of Europe to explore the connections between art history and a host of contemporary citizenship issues. This will be helpful when teaching about Human Rights.
Frances Bestley, Programme Director for the Rights Respecting Schools Award at UNICEF UK, reflects on the implications of the UN Convention on the Rights on the Child for education.
Holly Greenland, Learning and Digital Projects Manager and Caterina Loriggio, 2015 Anniversaries Senior Campaign Manager. write about connecting the celebrations of the Manga Carta and the De Montfort Parliament as well as providing a description of the numerous activities and resources being planned by parliament for teachers.
Justin Fisher, Professor of Political Science at Brunel University, discusses the importance of Magna Carta to the contemporary political landscape. He shows the impact of the ideas enshrined in 1215 on the development of representative democracy and the rule of law in the UK.
In this article, published in the Winter 2017 edition of Teaching Citizenship, Liz Moorse and Lee Jerome report on a pilot project undertaken by ACT on behalf of Robert F. Kennedy Centre for Justice and Human Rights.
