This presentation seeks to make both theoretical and empirical contributions. With regard to the former, I consider issues of citizenship, belonging and values in relation to contemporary schooling in England. With regard to the latter, I discuss the research process involved in empirical work in schools, and the possible identities and values inherent in that process.
Since 2014, all English schools have been required to promote the ‘fundamental British values’ of democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance. They are also required to prepare pupils for ‘life in modern Britain’. The national inspectorate, Ofsted, include both promotion and preparation as part of their school inspections.
This paper draws on data collected for a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust on how teachers in English schools understand and promote ‘British values’. The data is drawn from over 50 interviews with teachers and policy-makers and 40 lesson observations in nine primary and secondary schools with different intakes in terms of class and ethnicity.
In the first part of the presentation, I reflect on the process of doing policy research in schools and identify issues around access, and collecting and analysing data, as well as building relationships with respondents.  In the second and main part of the paper, I start by discussing the literature related to policy enactment in schools. This work argues that there is no simple process of implementation from national policy statement into practice, especially in the case of such a loose, ‘enabling’ policy as that on British values. I argue that the enactment of the requirement to promote British values can only be properly understood in relation to layers of context – each of which lays down a level of what has been called ‘policy sediment’. These layers of context include, amongst other factors, government concern with extremism and the integration of ethnic minorities, and ‘moral panics’ over migration. In relation to schools specifically, the contemporary educational policy context also has particular features (e.g. an emphasis on pupil performance and targets and shortfalls in teacher recruitment, retention and school funding). All these different contexts are powerful in shaping the range of possibilities and opportunities for teachers in terms of curriculum and pedagogy in teaching about values and citizenship. In the light of this, I continue by detailing the range of different school responses to the British values policy, including those that draw on ‘British symbols’ (tea and the Queen) but also those that reject this approach. As part of this discussion, I interrogate the contours of the ‘good’ citizen identity that teachers present to pupils in different schools with different populations in terms of social class and ethnicity. I conclude by discussing the implications of the enactment of the British values policy for defining who belongs and who does not in the liberal polity.