Teachers and Schools celebrated at the ACT Citizenship Teaching Awards 2024

Teachers and Schools celebrated at the ACT Citizenship Teaching Awards 2024

The ACT Citizenship Teaching Awards 2024 took place on Wednesday 26 June, at Coin Street Conference Centre. Hosted by Chief Executive, Liz Moorse and ACT’s Chair of Trustees, Marcus Bhargava, the evening celebrated the hard work and achievements of teachers and schools committed to delivering exceptional Citizenship education.

We received a wealth of nominations across the 10 categories being awarded this year, highlighting the outstanding contribution of Citizenship teachers, school leaders and organisations from across the UK. For the second year in a row, four Special Recognition Awards were also awarded to exceptional individuals who have made significant contributions to Citizenship teaching and education, as well as for services to ACT.

Our most prestigious award, the Lord Blunkett Outstanding Contribution to Citizenship, was presented by ACT Honorary President and former Education Secretary, The Rt. Hon. Lord Blunkett. The award went to Sera Shortland, Head of Citizenship at New College Leicester for her dedicated passion for teaching and learning all things Citizenship. She is Vice Chair of the ACT Council, as well as a Citizenship Teaching Ambassador, and regularly contributes CPD sessions for both the ACT Conference, UCL Citizenship ITT students, and the Gordon Cook 5 Nations conference. She has produced and consulted on Citizenship lessons for OAK National Academy and BBC Bitesize.

Liz Moorse said, “Sera is an innovator and develops exciting ways to teach. She is always first in the queue to help other teachers with Citizenship and to join national-level Citizenship projects when ACT puts out a call for volunteers. She is an outstanding teacher who has made a real impact on thousands of teachers in the schools across Leicester where she has taught for many years.

Artur Swierzbinowicz from Pathways School was awarded Citizenship Mentor of the Year  for his integral role in establishing ‘an ambitious curriculum offer at the school, that has been recognised by Ofsted as outstanding in terms of personal development’. He works ‘tirelessly’ to ensure trainees have an exceptional training experience and has delivered inclusive behaviour management training to trainees across all secondary subjects offered by Kingston University. 

Awarding bodies, AQA, OCR and Pearson Edexcel again sponsored three GCSE Citizenship Studies School of the Year honours. Each organisation presented a school that taught their exam specification with a trophy. The recipients were Harton Academy, Tyne and Wear (AQA),  The Robert Napier School, Kent (OCR) and Mulberry School for Girls, Tower Hamlets (Pearson Edexcel).

Awarding bodies, AQA, OCR and Pearson Edexcel again sponsored three GCSE Citizenship Studies School of the Year honours. Each organisation presented a school that taught their exam specification with a trophy. The recipients were Harton Academy, Tyne and Wear (AQA),  The Robert Napier School, Kent (OCR) and Mulberry School for Girls, Tower Hamlets (Pearson Edexcel).

Josie Verghese, of BBC Young Reporter joined us to present this year’s Secondary Teacher of the Year  category. There was a strong field of nominations for the award, with all nominees demonstrating dedicated commitment to the subject and to their students through the provision of high-quality citizenship education.The award went to Rachel Burlton of Mulberry School for Girls, whose development of a bespoke, self-curated curriculum with high levels of active learning, engenders strong learner engagement. Students commended that ‘everything we learnt always had something you could take away from it’.

The Student Choice Award  was the final award of the evening and was awarded to Zoe Fox of Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic School, Skelmersdale. Zoe was described by students as providing ‘excellent opportunities, which most other students would never get the pleasure of experiencing’ and creating a ‘fun working environment and family-like classroom’.  Her innovation and ability to foster a positive classroom environment lead her students to comment that ‘Citizenship has always been a lesson we look forward to thanks to her’.

You can read about each of the awards and shortlisted nominations in our Awards Programme here.