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Active Citizens in Schools (ACiS)

Now available: Evaluation of the ACiS pilot programme
What is ACiS?
Where has ACiS come from?
ContinYou's approach to ACiS
Resources and evaluation
Training
Contact

What is ACiS?

Active Citizens in Schools (ACiS) is an award scheme that empowers young people to get involved in projects that benefit the school and wider community. It supports schools to address the citizenship curriculum through real-life opportunities. The scheme provides an innovative and exciting approach to school and community-based work, which can help schools address the citizenship curriculum through motivating, real-life opportunities for young people.

ACiS is designed to be a flexible award programme, which schools can adapt to their current work and interests. It can also help schools meet other strategies and initiatives, such as the National Healthy Schools Standard, Key Stage Three Strategy, proposed changes to 14-19 education and developing Key Skills. It can be used to formally recognise young people’s existing commitments to and work on active citizenship projects.

Based on the Nine Principles of Millennium Volunteers (MV), young people’s achievements are recognised through a Certificate for 25 hours of voluntary involvement and an Award for 50 hours.

Where has ACiS come from?

When citizenship became a statutory National Curriculum subject for 11-16 year-olds in 2001, the DfES (now DCSF) wanted to pilot work that provides young people with opportunities for school and community involvement through volunteering. The Millennium Volunteers Programme for 16-24 year-olds was already proving successful and provided a suitable model to pilot with a younger age group. The DfES Millennium Volunteers Unit (now part of the Connexions Service National Unit) funded two organisations, Education Extra (now ContinYou) and Changemakers, to develop ACiS with a variety of secondary schools.

Throughout the pilot, ContinYou’s approach has been to encourage schools to develop and adapt the ACiS programme to their own needs, histories and expertise. Young people, teachers and staff involved in ACiS have thus developed a sense of ownership of their work; schools have adapted the programme to fit with young people at their own starting points and have linked their citizenship work into other initiatives and ideas within their schools.

ContinYou's approach to ACiS

Based on the wealth of good practice developed by our partner schools in the pilot project, ContinYou considers that an effective ACIS project should:

  • be based on the Nine Principles of Millennium Volunteers
  • be inclusive
  • be experimental, innovative and fun
  • support and empower young people to become active citizens
  • involve young people in the planning, running and development of their projects at a level appropriate to their skills and experiences
  • give young people the opportunity to work with a variety of groups and different peers
  • help young people develop a variety of skills, including key and thinking skills
  • allow young people to reflect on and learn from their experiences.

An effective ACiS project should also:

  • bring the citizenship curriculum alive
  • be a method to help schools meet other initiatives
  • recognise the ongoing achievements of young people in out-of-schools hours and community work
  • be flexible: sometimes, things might go wrong, but this might lead to unexpected and exciting new avenues
  • develop and distribute training programmes and support materials
  • link mentoring and volunteering opportunities.

Resources and evaluation

Evaluation report

The Active Citizens in Schools: Evaluation of the DfES Pilot Programme research report is now available. Download the PDF file (750 KB) from the DfES website.

Know-How Pack

You can order a free copy of the ACiS Know-How Pack, which includes ACiS: The Framework; Hands Up! Hands On! (the ContinYou ACiS toolkit); and Making Citizenship Real (the Changemakers toolkit) from DCSF, Publications at the following address, quoting the reference ACIS RESOURCE.

How to be an ACiS ambassador: a young people's toolkit

This toolkit is a training resources written for students in Key Stages 3 and 4. Developing leadership skills is an important part of citizenship, so thi sbooklet is written to develop your exisiting ACiS group's leadership skills and to encourage them to open up active citizenship in your school from a dedicated small group to larger groups.

This can be ordered free from the DCSF quoting ACIS AMBASSADOR TOOLKIT. See details below.

DCSF Publications
PO Box 5050
Sherwood Park
Annesley
Nottingham
NG15 0DJ

Tel: 0845 60 222 60
Email: dfes@prologuk.com

Contact

To find out more about this flexible award programme, email Bill Malley.