Educational Policies and the Socialisation of Youth in Civic Values: Evidence from the 2015 Fundamental British Values Initiative

In 2014, the Department for Education in the United Kingdom, in conjunction with the Government’s Prevent plan, launched an initiative instructing all schools to promote “Fundamental British Values” (FBV) comprising “democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs”. The ultimate aims of the policy are to promote a shared "Britishness" and prevent violent extremism. Concerns were raised about the policy's overall effectiveness, and that rather than instilling those values, it may alienate minorities. No research, however, has systematically evaluated the long-term consequences of the FBV initiative. This paper evaluates the FBV initiative in terms of both its intended and potentially unintended consequences. This aim is attained by (1) comparing cohorts of citizens graduated from lower-secondary school right before the initiative with those who graduated after; and (2) comparing graduates in England who were under the FBV jurisdiction with those in Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland for whom the Prevent and FBV initiatives did not apply as strongly. The paper makes use of various data sources such as the British Census, Understanding Society Survey, and the Integrated Values Survey. Overall, the study presents the first systematic evidence base on the long-term, large-scale, intended and possibly unintended consequences of the FBV initiative. Ultimately, the findings address questions related to the mechanisms of socialisation of youth, development of civic and political values, and the extent to which large-scale educational policies can affect these mechanisms.