Sajid Javid is right – the British citizenship test is a bad pub quiz. So what is he going to do about it?

2018/10/05 Leave a comment

Good comments on the UK citizenship test and the “values” question that apply more broadly than the UK:

Speaking at his party’s conference this week, the home secretary Sajid Javid criticised his own government’s British citizenship test, describing it as like “a pub quiz” that is not fit for its intended purpose.

Javid is not the first to realise this. In 2013, I published what is still the only comprehensive report into the citizenship test, in which I criticised it in those terms – and this was discussed in parliament. So it is pleasing to see my campaign for changing the test has the home secretary on board.

It’s about time. The test is a key part of the immigration system for permanent settlement. Over 2 million tests have been sat since it launched in 2005. Immigrants sit a multiple choice exam with 24 randomly selected questions and must get 18 or more correct to pass the exam. It costs £50 for each attempt – and one person was known to take it 64 times.

The test’s intended purpose is to help confirm that an immigrant has successfully integrated into British society. This might be thought best achieved by checking for any criminal record or tax arrears over an extended residency period (which are also part of the process), but the test is supposed to add something extra beyond this. And here it categorically fails.

If you pour over the roughly 3,000 facts covered by the test questions, including about 280 historical dates spread over 180 pages, it is difficult to see what practical use the citizenship test has. Its handbook does not say how to contact emergency services, register with a GP or report a crime. There is no mention of 999 or of how many MPs sit in the House of Commons. But you must know how many elected representatives sit in the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Stormont in Northern Ireland. The handbook requires memorising the height of the London Eye and the age of Big Ben. And while you must know about starting a free school, there is no mention of the national curriculum.

Unsurprisingly, the test is regularly seen as the test for British citizenship that few British citizens can pass, with many migrants seeing it as an opportunity by the Home Office to extract increasingly more expensive fees through a test of random trivia meant to make more fail.

Instead of ensuring new and old citizens were coming together, my research found the test was actually moving them apart – and doing more harm than goodat confirming integration.

In June this year, a House of Lords select committee on citizenship and civic participation agreed with me, endorsing seven of my recommendations, including the need for a new test and an advisory group engaging with the public to close the gap between public expectations and what any such test should cover. While Javid’s remarks acknowledge the citizenship test’s problems that the Lords select committee and I raised, it is unclear what he proposes to do about it. He says the test is not enough, but then promises to bring in “a British values test” as something new.

My concern arises from one difference that I have with the home secretary: I have sat the citizenship test and know it firsthand. If Javid examines the test, he will see that it already does ask immigrants about “the liberal, democratic values that bind our society together”. So if he wants the UK citizenship test to do this, the good news is it already includes it.

It would be a mistake to rush towards launching a new values test or revising the current one without engaging with the public. There are concerns about immigration and how well it is managed that have remained strong for several years. An edict based on guesswork won’t build confidence, especially for those most anxious about immigration levels. One problem shouldn’t lead to something worse.

Now is the time to foster healing for a country divided many different ways beyond the Remain and Leave split. An advisory group, preferably led by a naturalised British citizen who understands the process firsthand, could play an important role in bringing citizens together to discuss what British values we have, what they mean to people and how they can help rebuild a post-Brexit immigration system. Such work could be done over a few months, serving as a useful means for fostering confidence while dispelling immigration myths that might remove some of the toxicity from the debate and move the conversation on.

But it would take courage to make such a new start – and we can only hope such a plan is in mind.

Source: Sajid Javid is right – the British citizenship test is a bad pub quiz. So what is he going to do about it?

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Good luck with the British citizenship test, Meghan Markle. It’s a mess | Thom Brooks | The Guardian

2018/03/02 Leave a comment

Good pointed commentary – better to have tests that are more general civic knowledge-based, as in Canada, than ones that try to capture obscure facts. A written test, of course, is more administratively efficient and consistent than individual interviews, the main reason it was introduced in Canada in the early 90s:

Meghan Markle is on a fast track from Hollywood to British royalty. She’ll certainly be joining the royal family from the moment of her marriage to Harry in May. And yet, if she wants to remain permanently in the UK, even the wife of the Queen’s grandson must pass a citizenship test.

The test has been sat more than 2m times since its launch in 2005. Anyone applying must correctly answer 18 or more of 24 multiple choice questions to pass – and the test costs £50 for every attempt.

It’s like a bad pub quiz: the test for British citizenship that few Brits could pass. One candidate failed 64 times before finally passing the test, and if you look at what the government’s quiz asks, it’s easy to see why. How many of us know the height of the London Eye, the age of Big Ben’s clock tower, or that Sake Dean Mahomed introduced curry to the UK in opening the Hindoostane Coffee House on George Street, London? These are some of the nearly 3,000 facts in the 180-page test handbook anyone wanting to stay in Britain is expected to know.

The absurdity doesn’t stop there. The test requires knowledge of the numbers of elected representatives in each regional assembly, but not in the House of Commons. Candidates need not know how to report a crime or register with a GP, but must know the approximate size of the Lake District and about 278 historical dates including when the Roman emperor Claudius invaded Britain.

If the citizenship test is meant to help migrants “integrate into society and play a full role in your local community”, there is little evidence to show it succeeds. The test has appeared in three editions and been used for more than a decade, but there has never been a formal consultation on whether its aims are being achieved. So I did it for them.

My 2013 report exposed serious failings, including the test’s impracticality and the many mistakes and omissions. My report made a dozen recommendations for how these problems might be fixed. Despite being raised in parliament, the test remains unchanged.

If left unreformed the test is damaging integration more than it’s enabling it
For my book Becoming British, I interviewed citizens across the UK about the citizenship test. Almost no one believed it helped their integration into a British society where few had even heard of the test. Instead of building bridges, most saw the test as another barrier whose main purpose was to extract additional fees. The lesson to learn here is that the test is currently damaging integration more than it’s enabling it.

There is an opportunity now to get this right as Britain changes its immigration policies after Brexit. Either the test is substantially modified to become a less trivial and fairer test of knowledge required for citizenship, or it should be thrown on the scrap heap.

A citizenship test is not obviously necessary to demonstrate a knowledge of life in the UK or British values. People could instead be tested informally without an exam, for instance by satisfying existing requirements for lawful residency, avoiding a criminal record, paying taxes owed and the like. These are ways in which people do show an understanding of living in this country in harmony with others.

But if the test is kept, change is needed – and a first step would be to make the answers freely available. Displaying knowledge about living in Britain shouldn’t require buying a book with the information in. And rather than the test remaining a block, it should be relaunched as something that is primarily of symbolic importance. In the US, the test is the last step to citizenship with zealously non-partisan questions about who was the first president or which side won the American civil war.

By contrast, half the UK’s test information on education is about setting up the government’s then flagship programme of free schools, but without any mention of a national curriculum, A-levels and more. Such partisanship needs to go. A test aimed at formally recognising the belonging someone has already earned is clearly preferable to what we have.

And if it is revised, it’s critical that there is a public dialogue about what is included. The government imposes this test of Britishness in the public’s name, but it is so alien as to render it absurd. People need to have confidence in our immigration system again, and imposing arbitrary knowledge tests won’t solve it.

Finally, migrants shouldn’t have a veto, but they deserve to have a voice. If the test doesn’t support integration, this needs to be fixed. Second-guessing the experience of migrants like me – who have passed the test and become British citizens – only continues the problem.

via Good luck with the British citizenship test, Meghan Markle. It’s a mess | Thom Brooks | Opinion | The Guardian

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The UK citizenship is becoming like a bad pub quiz and has to change – Thom Brooks

2016/06/06 Leave a comment

Thos Brooks on some of the absurdities of the current British citizenship test and finding the right balance and focus for such tests:

The first version of the test was launched in 2005 and a second edition published in 2007. Both were notable by their errors. They included mistakes like getting wrong the number of MPs in Parliament or asking about government departments and programmes that had been closed or stopped.

When I sat the test in 2009, it was possible to sit a test where the correct answers were all factually false. And remember this was supposed to be about ensuring people integrated into society, not failing them on false pretences because no-one can be bothered to see what is actually on the test that migrants must pass to become residents or citizens.

The citizenship tests demanded little knowledge of British history and culture. I campaigned for a change in 2011 and welcomed the coalition government’s commitment to revising the test so it includes these missing features closing this important gap.

However, the pendulum has swung too far in this new direction.

The citizenship test has gone from a test of practical trivia to the more purely trivial. The test handbook has grown to 180 pages crammed with about 3,000 facts and over 250 dates that few native-born British citizens will know.

Gone is information about contacting emergency services, reporting a crime or registering with a GP. In its place, we learn the approximate age of Big Ben’s clock and the height of the London Eye. Telephone numbers like 999 are out, but the front desk of the Scottish Parliament is included to ‘book tickets or arrange tours’. Or that Sake Dean Mahomet came to Britain from Bengal in 1782 to set up Britain’s first curry house in 1810 – the Hindoostane Coffee House – on George Street, London.

Few, if any, British citizens know any of these facts that seem fit only for a bad pub quiz – nor should any be expected to. Nor is it obvious why knowing such trivia foster integration.

In writing my new book Becoming British, I interviewed hundreds of people across the country. Native- born citizens expressed surprise – sometimes horror – about what the test asks in their name. There is something anti-British in lacking any sense of fair play, or as one person said: ‘It’s just not on’.

Turning to migrants like me who became British citizens, the common view is the test and accompanying rules are hurdles to be jumped and endured. People line up to become British not because they want to, but because they seek to hop off the rollercoaster of constant visa applications where the price only goes up – and Home Office service in the opposite direction. Becoming British has become more a necessity than a choice. It’s time action was taken.

The founding purpose of the British citizenship test – and much else in our wider immigration policy – now seems in jeopardy. The citizenship test has become unfit for purpose. It’s time the government puts this right.

Over ten years ago, Crick led an Advisory Group that published a report setting out recommendations for how the test should look and how citizenship ceremonies are run. It is high time there was a fundamental review into how our citizenship policies a decade later.

Not only has immigration to Britain been transformed over this time, but its importance as an issue of real concern for the public. The times have changed and a review is now urgently required.

Crucially, a new review of the citizenship test and naturalisation policies more generally must consult with naturalised British citizens, especially migrants that have sat the test and become British. Our policies – like the use of the test to assist integration – would benefit enormously by seeking feedback from the very people it aims to address.

Only then can we gain a better understanding of how the test and related procedures help or hinder integration. Immigrants who became British citizens should have a front seat to help drive improvement. Now.

My research suggests that the current procedures may be counterproductive. The effect of making many new citizens pass knowledge tests that no born British citizen could runs the serious risk of not bringing future British citizens together, but helping push them apart. It builds a barrier where we need a bridge.

This is not an argument for making the test less difficult or important. I believe it should continue to play a role in immigration policy.

But we need to consider more seriously whether the current test does more harm than good – and the measures we should adopt to ensure it fulfils its original purpose.

Becoming British is an important milestone and we honour that by treating the test and our naturalisation policies with the respect they deserve.

Source: The UK citizenship is becoming like a bad pub quiz and has to change – Thom Brooks – Chronicle Live

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