The future of Global Citizenship Education (GCED) in UK schools
Evidence from Send My Friend to School for the Future of UK Aid and Development Assistance inquiry
Overview
Send My Friend to School brings together INGOs, teacher unions, schools and young people to call for quality education for all children across the globe. Our schools campaign began in 2005 and during the subsequent years we have observed declining support for GCED, particularly in English schools. This has impacted upon the number of schools we engage, declining from approximately 10,000 schools in 2010 to fewer than 2,000 schools now. Schools in Scotland and Wales have sustained higher levels of engagement with Send My Friend to School than schools in England. We believe this is primarily because the devolved curricula and educational priorities in the nations are more supportive of GCED than in England.
We believe the reasons for the decline in schools engagement are due to both internal factors relating to the policies and practice of particularly the English education system, and external factors over which the UK’s education systems do not have much direct control. It’s a ‘perfect storm’. What follows are our observations about GCED in England, where the great majority of the UK’s schools are located, and suggestions for the next steps.
In 2010 the new coalition government ended the ‘Global Dimension’ guidance to schools. This removed the expectation that all English schools should embed global learning in their curricula. At the same time citizenship education was de-prioritised, the ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’ promoted the learning of facts rather than skills and rapidly increasing academisation along with ‘league tables’ encouraged schools to competitively focus on academic success at the expense of broader socially valuable objectives.
Prior to 2010, GCED had been generously funded by DFID through programme delivery and research partnerships with CSOs, the British Council and academia. A lively community of expert support for schools grew and thrived. This support system still exists but has greatly shrunk since 2010 due to severely reduced funding. This is despite the popularity and impact of the voluntary DFID-funded Global Learning Programme (GLP) between 2012-2018. Finally, Brexit excluded schools and CSOs from potential EU funding and projects (eg: EC DEAR, Erasmus+).
Externally the long-term impacts of austerity, rising child poverty and inequality on schools and children followed by the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on education and children’s wellbeing have further and understandably marginalised GCED to become a ‘nice to have’. Many schools and their communities entered ‘survival mode’. The position today is of isolated examples of excellence where individual teachers and school leaders have retained their enthusiasm for GCED in spite of the changes outlined above. A child receiving GCED nowadays benefits from a postcode lottery with few winners.
However, in 2026 the need for GCED to have a secure and universal position within a ‘broad and balanced’ curriculum is greater than ever. This goes beyond young people’s understanding of ODA and the UK’s partnerships with other countries. War, inequality, forced migration, climate justice and global poverty are just a small number of urgent and inter-related issues which cross over between the global, national and local. They impact upon young people both individually and collectively. Yet evidence suggests that the education system is falling well short in meeting young people’s needs. For example, research by Teach the Future suggested that only 4% of students feel that they know a lot about climate change.
In November 2025 the government published its eagerly anticipated review into ‘Building a world-class curriculum for all’ as a precursor to reforming the English National Curriculum. This is a lengthy and comprehensive document with a number of positive suggestions. The new curriculum will be better than the one it replaces. However, the review omits explicit reference to GCED (Bourn, 2025). This is a major shortcoming that should be recognised and corrected as soon as possible. It is particularly disappointing since good GCED has positive cross-curricular impacts in all areas of learning (eg: critical thinking, making informed judgements, oracy, creativity, participation).
What should be done?
The generous funding for GCED that existed before 2010 is no longer realistically available. However there remains significant expertise, pedagogy and resources – including Send My Friend to School – to deploy. GCED is not starting again from zero. Furthermore, rolling out a new National Curriculum, which will now be compulsory for all state schools, will require significant resources. Mainstreaming GCED within the new curriculum will add little additional cost to the overall budget and workload.
1. Incentivise the delivery of GCED. This could be done through the new National Curriculum programmes of study for individual subjects (eg: geography, citizenship), a cross-curricular theme and/or specific DfE guidance issued to schools (as with the Global Dimension). One way or another, GCED requires dedicated space in the curriculum.
2. Identify and exploit synergies with complementary curricular areas. Two of the most obvious are climate education, which is included in the review, and democratic participation. The Electoral Commission (2026) has outlined the shortfalls and inequalities in citizenship education as 16-year-olds prepare to vote. The outward-looking and participatory nature of GCED will help to address this need.
3. Develop and implement teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD). One challenge facing GCED is the falling level of teacher knowledge, confidence and expertise. In the Global Learning Programme (2012-2018) this was addressed by a voluntary ‘trickle down’ training and delivery model which required significant effort to recruit and retain willing schools. An approach which is more embedded in the roll out of the new curriculum may help to reduce costs and focus efforts. Platforms already exist to share teaching resources with schools.
4. Review and clarify the DfE guidance on ‘Political Impartiality in Schools’ (2022, 2025) to ensure that it supports, rather than inadvertently inhibits, the safe and responsible teaching of active citizenship as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. This should include age-appropriate discussion of controversial global issues, real-life democratic participation and young people’s voice. All are part of GCED teaching methodology.
5. Allocate clear responsibilities to the DfE and FCDO. The cut in ODA to 0.3% of GNI and the spending of ODA on the domestic asylum system mean that returning to FCDO funding of GCED right now is neither practical nor desirable. The funding and management of GCED should be the responsibility of the DfE, along with its other curricular responsibilities. However, the FCDO possesses deep knowledge of international development which should be shared with curriculum managers in a systemic way.
Conclusion
Schools are highly adaptive institutions. They respond creatively to changes in what they are required to do and how their success will be evaluated. The demise of GCED in recent years, particularly in England, is primarily due to a steady withdrawal of encouragement to deliver it and its replacement with other priorities, many of which are now being questioned. Re-incentivisation is the key to reviving GCED. Many teachers will be excited by this opportunity.