Publication Idea Change

I have been doing some thinking over Easter about the publication for context of practice and have realised that the current idea I had for my book wasn't very solid. I have been trying to think of other topics still linked to my project and was drawn to education, especially in younger children. I think targeting my publication towards this audience will get across the idea that I am looking towards the future and how peoples opinions and valuations of nationality might change.

I thought of a few ideas relating to this theme but as I started to figure out what I would actually produce, the ideas just seemed to fall apart. It was during a conversation with my mum (who works in a secondary school) that the topic of British values came up. Apparently schools now have a policy to promote and teach British values through assemblies, events and integration into the curriculum. This really interested me and I wanted to learn more about what these British values were, what was it that supposedly defined us as a nation?

The prominent points are democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and the tolerance of a different beliefs and faiths.

An additional point on some policies is safeguarding which links to the government's 'Prevent Strategy' which fights against extremism. 

I think this shows that British values are changing with the times and we are becoming more connected and accepting of the rest of the world and people from other countries. In this list there is no sense of nationalism or exclusivity which in my opinion is a positive step towards the future.

I have changed the idea for my publication to a booklet for young children attending primary schools. I want to target this young age group to teach them directly about the values of the country they live in, hopefully this will minimise the influence of opinions of older generations who might be less tolerant of the changes that are occurring in Britain in modern day.

From my initial research, a lot of primary schools include a British Values Policy on their website, they all differ slightly but follow the main few concepts. I am thinking of creating an illustrated information booklet about these values to be given to children after an assembly on the subject or as a lesson handout or maybe as something included in an information pack for when a child starts their school life. Primary school children are aged 4-11 years old, within this age range there is a lot of learning and development that takes place which gives a wide ranger of abilities to cater for. I think the best way to tackle this is to use minimal text, just simple sentences that can be read by the older children. The book will consist mainly of images which will be enjoyable for the older children to look at but will be crucial to help the less able readers to understand the main points.

I need to do some more research into the topic of British values policies and the individual points I need to include. I am excited to work on a project aimed at children because this is something I haven't done in a long time and I am looking forward to see whether my way of working suits this purpose. I need to make sure it doesn't become too in depth and similar to something you'd find in an employment contract such as an equal opportunities clause or a code of conduct. 

The booklet needs to be engaging, educational, informative, friendly, easy to read, appropriate and inclusive.