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This paper analyses the fracturing of civic and moral virtue within curricular policies pertaining to Citizenship in England since the late 1990s. A longstanding aim of education and schooling, the teaching of citizenship gained a more secure base in the English curriculum with the introduction of Citizenship as a statutory subject for 11–16 years olds from 2002, which owed a great deal to the Report of the Advisory Group on Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools (Crick Report). The report drew intimate connections between civic virtue, moral virtue, and personal character. These connections have become seriously fractured over the years since the Crick Report. In charting this fracturing, the paper will examine how the character-influenced direction taken in the early/mid-2000s was replaced by, at first, a more general emphasis on British Values before morphing into a more specific, though no less problematic, concentration on Fundamental British Values. While character education has gained significant policy attention in England over the last six years, the civic dimensions have been at best underplayed, with little connection to education for citizenship. It is argued that without greater clarity and consistency about how the moral – including moral virtues – intersects with the civic in contemporary Britain, official curricular policy (whether for Citizenship education, character education or more generally) will restrict rather than encourage the education of young citizens who are informed, wise, responsible and active participants in their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the abandonment of the Gifted and Talented initiative and the recent developments in mathematics educational policy (i.e. the new national curriculum and the "mastery" initiative), this research project aimed to explore the current primary school situation regarding educating the "most able" children in mathematics, along with teachers' views, experiences and perceived needs. This was a pilot research study gathering insights from a small number of schools in order to identify areas that could be improved by largerscale research studies. The findings obtained from 49 schools under four local educational authorities in southwest England suggested that the education of children with the ability or potential to excel in mathematics has reached a crucial stage. There is a real need for specialised support and guidance in recognising and developing mathematical potential for classroom teachers and school leaders who try on their own to discover what could enable them to meet the government's educational target of achieving "excellence everywhere". This support should have underpinnings from theory and research, preventing our schools from using questionable practices or repeating methods that have failed in the past. This article highlights research areas specifically for this reason. It also raises some questions with potential implications for the special educational needs coordinator's role, as well as for implementing new initiatives like the mathematics "mastery curriculum". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]