This report covers 31 European countries: all European Union (EU) member states and Iceland, Norway, Croatia and Turkey. It aims to sum up how policies and measures relating to citizenship education have evolved in recent years. The report provides an overview of five main topics: 1) Curriculum aims and organisation; 2) Student and parent participation in schools; 3) School culture and student participation in society; 4) Assessment and evaluation; 5) Support for teachers and school heads. The report also highlights progress made, where evident, since the previous Eurydice study on this topic in 2005. The reference year is 2010/11. Improving teachers’ knowledge and skills for teaching citizenship remains a challenge. While, in general, citizenship education is integrated into initial teacher education courses for secondary education specialists in subjects such as history and geography, only two of the 31 countries assessed (England and Slovakia) train prospective teachers as specialists in citizenship education. Furthermore, while several countries have reformed their citizenship education curricula in recent years, these reforms have rarely been introduced in initial teacher education or continuing professional development programmes. Standardised methods that guide teachers in their assessment of pupils are also still widely lacking, the report finds.
