From August, schools will have a statutory responsibility to teach citizenship at key stages 3 and 4. “It will provide coherence,” said David Blunkett, “in the way in which all pupils are helped to develop a full understanding of their roles and responsibilities as citizens in a modern democracy.” It is, say dissenters, the new secular religion. No doubt the dissenters will be on the increase following the offence caused by his recent comments encouraging ethnic minorities to embrace British culture.

Crime, human rights, democratic participation, significance of the media, the wider issues and challenges of global interdependence - these are but a few of the topics included in a subject remit as wide as it is sensitive. In this multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-faith society teachers are helping students to garner the knowledge and understanding to become “informed citizens”.

Dr Joyce Wood is the director of Teachers Helping Each Other (THEO) a National UK initiative which builds on the spirit of citizenship within the teaching community by enabling skilled ICT teachers to share their expertise. “Citizens of any country,” she believes, “need to know what their national values are, and the inclusion of citizenship in the curriculum provides an opportunity for students to discuss religious, political and ethical subjects openly and vigorously.”

According to Dr Wood, ICT and geography are the two subjects most helpful to an understanding of citizenship. ICT is helpful as it is “able to consume news in a critical way; to analyse information and its sources is a vital skill in the information age,” and geography is good as the analytical tools employed allow teachers to introduce global topics such as conflict, poverty and the exploitation of finite natural resources in a factual and non-confrontational manner.

At Raincliffe School in Scarborough that’s exactly what they have done. Year 9 students have been working on a project involving strands of all three subjects to investigate the issue of change in the Amazon rainforest. Pupils used ICT resources such as desktop flyers, PowerPoint presentations, emails and Web links to advance the vested interests of government, farmers, environmentalists and local tribes. “ICT was especially important,” says David Gardner, curriculum manager and head of ICT, “because it was both the medium for finding and for presenting information.”

The project culminated in four presentations and a class discussion. At its conclusion there was a general realisation that the issues weren’t as straightforward as they had seemed and that information tools - websites, particularly - couldn’t necessarily be trusted.

Two other school projects have successfully addressed citizenship issues of a more local nature. Students at the Brooksbank School in Elland, Huddersfield, measured the speed of cars outside their school and used the findings to evaluate the wider social implications and to canvas school governors on road safety.

In a similar scheme at Horndean Community School in Hampshire, pupils incorporated road safety data analysis in a report that was presented to LEA officials. Teachers Julia Harper and Gwil Williams, who led the project, worked with counsellors, police representatives and county planners to improve transport facilities for students. Among “significant improvements” were the installation of speed bumps.

The conflict in Afghanistan has engendered a plurality of opinion that continues to divide political parties, the national press and the general public. It may not be, as PMTony Blair has repeatedly stated, “a war against Islam”, but it would be naive, irresponsible and cowardly to pretend that the Islamic perspective on the conflict is that of the West.

How can you present these issues? Can they ever be presented impartially? Do educators celebrate the downfall of a regime that kept women enslaved, or do they try to explain - and in doing so, possibly exculpate - the culture from which these attitudes arose? Where, in short do moral and cultural relativisms give way, if ever, to an absolute moral code? These are huge questions that no teacher should have to face unprepared. Thankfully, resources, many of them ICT-based, are emerging that frame these concerns in thoughtful and stimulating contexts.

Explore Parliament is a website jointly developed by RM and the Parliamentary Education Unit where visitors are introduced to topics such as lobbying, suffrage, parliamentary procedure and members’ interests. There’s a virtual tour of the Palace of Westminster and an excellent search facility with just enough trivia (including free snuff for members) to leaven the more heavyweight detail.

The most stimulating part of the site, Act of Parliament, is an interactive online debating chamber where participants debate nominated subjects. These “bills” go through the same process - White Paper, first and second reading, committee and report stage - as they would in Parliament and are intended to give students a taste of democracy at work.

For topicality, Espresso is hard to beat. This broadband satellite service to schools provides mediated news that is updated weekly. Among the citizenship themes covered are, helping the homeless, human rights, the war on terrorism and animal rights.

Well presented multimedia can engage students in the analytical and empathetical processes that, hopefully, will illuminate their later lives. One of the successes of last year’s BETT was Secrets from Anglia Multimedia (review p62) an interactive mystery that dealt with such fundamental ideas as personal loyalty and self-awareness. Granada’s Just Like... series, in CD and book format, presents similar issues for primary pupils.

Britannic Street is an educational website based on a street of fictional characters. It tackles personal, social and health education issues and Web interactivities are accompanied by a video and set of worksheets.

Incorporating such a diverse and multi-disciplined subject as citizenship into the curriculum needs clear direction and a well defined framework. If you’re looking for the answer to the “What is citizenship?” question then point your browser at the DFES citizenship website, www.dfes.gov.ukcitizenship. Here you’ll find a description of each of the three inter-related concepts that make up the subject: social and moral responsibility, community learning and political responsibility. You’ll also discover links to the NGFL and some helpful support material.

Hugh John is a freelance writer