Active, informed and morally responsible citizenship is vital for the viability and sustainability of democratic life today. Being a ‘good’ citizen requires the cultivation, possession and expression of civic virtues, the qualities of character that enable citizens to play a positive, participatory role in their communities. Alongside civic virtues, other categories of virtue – intellectual, moral and performance – would also seem to play an important role in enabling active citizenship. In democratic societies, schools play a vital part in recognising and cultivating the virtues required for citizenship, including providing opportunities for pupils to develop and express virtues through participation in the civic lives of
their communities.
This report presents findings from the Civic Virtues Through Service to Others project conducted by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues between January 2021 and August 2022. As well as a range of other activities, the project involved a mixed-methods study consisting of semi-structured interviews with school leaders, surveys of teachers, surveys of primary and secondary pupils and focus groups with primary and secondary pupils in England and Wales. This report describes and analyses the data gathered from over 30 school leaders, over 200 teachers, over 320 primary pupils and over 1,100 secondary pupils.