The debate about standards in schools is changing, and Labour should be at the heart of it. Having revolutionised the way schools are managed and run from 1997 to 2007, the party has allowed the initiative to be seized by the Conservatives – a party with plenty of headline-grabbing policies, but no vision for English education.

This is not just a shame for the Labour party; it is a national tragedy. Parents, teachers, and politicians seem to agree that strong exam results are necessary for a school to be good, but believe that they are not sufficient for that school to be a success. We are uneasy that our young people leave school with qualifications alone (if that). There is concern over declining democratic participation and engagement among the young. A vision for English education would respond to this disquiet and give schools a renewed sense of purpose and mission.

We believe that the missing ingredient is citizenship, which is about understanding the change one can make in society. Schools are inescapably about citizenship in this sense: if a school does not show a young person that they are a citizen, it is showing them that they are not. And schools that are organised and oriented towards promoting citizenship are what we call citizen schools. Our research, published this month by IPPR and with the support of the Clore Social Leadership Programme, shows that citizen schools can directly address the blindspots of our current system. At our case-study schools – Nower Hill, St Clere’s, the RSA Academy at Tipton, and Prendergast – young people are treated as citizens and shown that they can make change – in their own lives, in the lives of their communities, and to the policies of their country as a whole. This can take a variety of guises – through formal citizenship qualifications, organising campaigns, or introducing citizenship as a thematic principle around which the curriculum is organised. And to be a citizen school doesn’t require a particular governance structure: academies, free schools, and comprehensives can participate. In every case, however, the intention was the same: to equip young people with the outlook, skills, and knowledge to influence their environment.

Our ‘exam factories’ risk skipping one of the most important lessons schools teach our young people – how to make change. A year after Ed Miliband delivered his ‘One Nation Labour’ speech at party conference, citizen schools represent a coherent vision for One Nation Labour education policy. They build on the solid foundations laid by the last Labour government – a focus on attainment as the first priority – by elaborating on an underdeveloped theme – citizenship. Labour, a party which owes its existence to movements for civic, social, and economic change owes the next generation an education policy that respects, encourages, and enables their citizenship, and gives them the opportunity to take up that mantle.

Our recent report shows how schools in the current system can begin to achieve this. The next step for Labour is to start to articulate this vision more fully.

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David Watson and Jamie Audsley are co-authors of Citizen Schools: Learning to Rebuild Democracy