Ethical and Active Citizenship
Our Vision
We can all make a difference. Our aim is for all of our children, and the rest of the Heyes Lane community, to believe this about themselves and of others. Ethical and Active Citizenship embodies our values, beliefs and ethos of life at Heyes Lane Primary school. We believe in trust, honesty and fairness; so we aim to nurture our pupils to become active and ethical citizens. We want our children to grow up with a desire to make the world a better place; to care about themselves, their community and the wider world.
Active Citizenship involves people working together to make positive differences to the society in which they live – locally, nationally and globally. We aim to educate and provide a range of opportunities for our children at Heyes Lane in order to produce motivated and responsible learners, who relate positively to peers, to staff and to the surrounding community.
Through teaching our bespoke Ethical and Active Citizenship curriculum, we explore the challenges facing children and society today, and provide opportunities to inspire and prepare pupils to take action now, and in the future, to make a positive difference in the world around them. We want to enable children to believe that they can understand and react to what is happening around them. We will prepare them to play an active role in school and society through their developing knowledge, skills and values and will encourage them to be thoughtful and caring citizens.
Curriculum Overview
Being an Active and Ethical Citizen is not a knowledge set we can just teach, but a way of thinking and acting – an ethos that we want to inspire. We do not just want to teach Citizenship, we want our pupils to demonstrate it. We can inspire and prepare them to play an active role in school and in society through developing their knowledge, skills and values.
Our bespoke EAC curriculum is divided into two parts, our Social Action projects, and the Teaching curriculum.
We run EAC projects across the school, which embed social action in every year of a child’s life in the school in a meaningful way. We all need to believe in Active Citizenship.
Children, staff, parents and other members of the community all need to come together to drive our ethos forward. This makes it exciting, fair and inclusive and will lead to a bigger impact and a greater shift in mind-set. Have a look below at some of the social Action projects we are working on now!
The Teaching Curriculum
Our curriculum supports a community where people participate and belong; every one of us can make a difference. We just need the knowledge, the skills and the confidence to do so. The curriculum we teach as ‘Active and Ethical Citizens’ has been designed using a breadth of knowledge, concepts and skills we believe are essential for our children to learn in order to become active citizens and understand our world.
We want our children to leave Heyes Lane with an understanding of how society works. Looking at our local communities, to the wider communities of the UK and the rest of the globe, we need to understand our world. We have divided the EAC curriculum into two parts – People and Planet.
People – we cover objectives to do with British Values the law, human rights, the economy and politics. We look at Diversity and Inclusion and Peace and Conflict.
Planet – We learn about caring for our communities, the importance and priority of Climate change, sustainability and energy. We look at different types of pollution and fair trade and what we can do to make a difference.
The aim of this is to inspire and equip Active and Ethical citizens. We believe this will help our children develop their self-confidence and belief that they can have a voice and make a difference, impacting and developing our society. It enables them to have a sense of pride in their achievements and contributions and prepares them for the challenges and opportunities as they grow up.
What is a social Action Project?
Our social action projects or ‘mini themes’ are an opportunity to engage the children at Heyes Lane in a meaningful project. Social Action is when individuals or groups of people identify an issue in their local, wider and national communities then take action to address it. It can be through raising awareness, fundraising, taking practical action or social enterprise.
Intent
Social action projects should provide a triple benefit – to the child, to the school and to the community. These should be chosen by children to address issues they feel important. They can be reactive/changeable depending on current affairs.
Outcomes
Pupils, staff and the Heyes Lane community will deliver and run a project, which they feel passionate about. It brings a sense of pride and belonging but also an understanding of why we hold fundraising events and how our help benefits different groups of people. We aim to ensure the children believe that they can make a difference, as they will have evidence of doing so actively.
