OK everyone, please hand in your law homework

THIS year, the Law Society of Scotland published its first manifesto for a Scottish election since 1999. Within it was a proposal to see more citizens become aware of how law works, including through the teaching of law. But how great is the appetite for law to become part of the secondary education curriculum?

Val McEwan, a spokeswoman for the Society says: “There has been a great deal of positive feedback and we are planning a scoping exercise to look at how this might be achieved and what role the Society might play in developing how legal education could be delivered in schools.”

Yet how much guidance is already available to young people curious enough to find out more themselves?

McEwan says: “We have been very supportive of existing legal education initiatives including the Young Citizens’ Passport scheme – we worked with Citizenship Foundation, in partnership with publishers Hodder Gibson, to develop a handbook for young people on the law in Scotland.”

Copies of the latest edition of the Young Citizens’ Passport can be bought online. The product is described as “a straightforward and accessible pathway through the legal rights and responsibilities of Scottish teenagers”. But why should young people have to pay to learn about law, which affects almost every aspect of their lives in Scotland?

An alternative might be the Schools Law Web initiative, started in 2003 by secondary school teacher Patrick Gaffney, and funded by the legal profession. A quick look at the website shows that primary and secondary pupils can access learning resources to help grasp the law while in the classroom.

Gaffney says of his initiative: “It is clear to me that the motivation for such a move is not to pursue the interests of the legal profession – many of the country’s most talented youngsters are already queuing up to study law in any case. The call for legal education in schools is based upon a real and sincere concern among many lawyers who feel young Scots will benefit if they have a greater understanding of the legal system and the key role it plays in the community.”

The desire to provide greater understanding of law in schools by someone who has actively tried to teach it to pupils first hand has appealed to the Law Society.

McEwan says: “We also work with Schools Law Web, which organises lawyers’ visits to schools to encourage a greater understanding of our law and provide a forum to discuss the law and the role of lawyers. The society’s director of law reform, Michael Clancy, paid a visit to his former primary school in Rutherglen to talk to the pupils and respond to all their questions.”

Other speakers visiting schools as part of the scheme have included former president of the Law Society David Preston, and corporate lawyer Eilidh Wiseman from Dundas & Wilson. Gaffney adds: “Teachers are also very happy to engage because the classroom materials and school visits are designed to save them time rather than increase workload. They would only participate if they felt their pupils were benefiting, and they clearly do.

“The project is so popular that it has expanded into some parts of England. In the future, I would like to develop a free-standing unit with content determined by the legal community which is seen by schools as both easily accessible and of real value.”

Schools Law Web has engaged school pupils to understand law better. Could those who feel capable study law as a subject option in S5 and S6, with the potential of entering a law degree at the second-year stage?

Laura McLachlan, communications manager for St Aloysius’ College in Glasgow, graduated from university with a law degree. She says: “Law is very different to most other courses at university. There aren’t any completely transferrable skills from secondary to university education the way there are for other degree courses.

“History, maths, English – among other subject-based degrees – have their roots in schools, so when you go on to university, while a higher level of analysis, evaluation and expression is expected in your coursework, you essentially have the knowledge and skill set required. Law requires a whole new genre of written work. Correctly quoting citations, among other technical styles of the written word, plays a huge role in your degree without the student having had any experience of this writing style or style of knowledge consumption.”

Work is required to bridge the gap between law as theory and law as a practical subject in schools. Yet with the challenge of a new curriculum format, those within the education sector suggest law would be a luxury rather than a necessity.

Ann Ballinger, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers Association, says: “We have some problems with this because although we all agree it would be a good idea to include some legal content in secondary education there is no appropriate place for it to go.

“All subjects in Scottish secondaries are taught by subject specialists with the exceptions of personal and social education (PSE) and there is no teaching qualification for law. A non-specialist teaching the subject would be OK if they had appropriate training and qualifications, and PSE would be the appropriate place for a taster. Unfortunately some schools allocate PSE classes on the basis of available teaching time rather than appropriate qualifications and interests. We firmly believe that the wrong person teaching this could be worse than no person.”

Gaffney agrees: “Current provision is patchy as issues of law tend to be covered within subjects such as modern studies and PSE. This inevitably leads to difficulties – for example, some schools have very strong modern studies departments while others do not.

“In the present climate of cuts, attempts to introduce any subject will face major hurdles, and a lack of qualified teachers is certainly one of those. However, Scotland’s legal community may reasonably take the view that adding law to the diet of the SQA is a long-term aim well worth pursuing.”

Ballinger adds: “If you intend this to be a full academic subject with appropriate qualifications, recognised by universities for entrance to law degrees, the problems are different and perhaps insurmountable: to be taught as an academic subject there would have to be a recognised teaching qualification.

“Adding law to S3&4 is fraught with difficulty because the middle-school curriculum is being squeezed from eight to five subjects, reducing the number of traditional subjects to an unacceptable level. There is simply no facility for a broad education in the middle phase and pupils taking three sciences, for example, find themselves unable to take anything else, further restricting their Higher choices.”

In the midst of an agenda of cuts, Ballinger doubts the possibility of local authorities agreeing to set up a new subject area and employ additional staff. With the curriculum already crowded, something else would have to be removed to provide a place for law.

Yet the Curriculum for Excellence aims to create “responsible citizens” able to “participate responsibly in political, economic, social and cultural life,” and “develop knowledge and understanding of the world and Scotland’s place in it”.

Perhaps greater understanding of Scots law as part of a modern curriculum would fit the bill.