Government law officers have launched a new set of free classroom materials designed to teach pupils in England and Wales about rights, rules and the legal system. According to the Attorney General's Office, the package covers Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 4 and starts with introductory lessons for five-year-olds before moving to more advanced work on contemporary threats to the rule of law. The policy significance is straightforward. Rather than announcing a statutory change, ministers are using centrally produced teaching resources to widen access to civic and legal education in ordinary classroom settings.
The materials were developed with expert educators and refined through teacher feedback. Each lesson is accompanied by worksheets, explainer videos and quizzes, giving schools a ready-made sequence rather than a single assembly pack or one-off activity. Richard Hermer KC said the work was developed with Oak National Academy and the Association of Citizenship Teachers. That matters because one of the main constraints in citizenship education is often not intent but teacher confidence, subject expertise and time to prepare suitable material.
The lesson plans are available free of charge through Oak National Academy, the Department for Education-backed platform that government says is used by around three-quarters of schools in England. In practical terms, that gives the programme an established delivery route rather than requiring schools to adopt a new provider or subscribe to a separate service. For school leaders, the immediate effect is administrative simplicity. Teachers can download material at classroom level, while departments can decide whether to use individual lessons, embed them in citizenship teaching or draw on them for wider personal development work.
The launch also sits within a wider curriculum discussion. The Attorney General's Office describes the resources as a practical example of what citizenship teaching can look like while the broader curriculum review continues. The Department for Education identifies the rule of law as a Fundamental British Value, so the new materials give schools a more concrete route for teaching that concept in plain English. The emphasis is not limited to abstract constitutional language; it links legal principles to everyday questions about rights, protections and responsibilities.
To mark the launch, Attorney General Richard Hermer KC and Advocate General for Scotland Catherine Smith KC visited Ark Blake Academy in Croydon on Thursday 2 July 2026. They observed a Year 9 lesson using the new resources and took questions from pupils. Hermer said every child should understand the laws and rights that protect them, and argued that too many schools have lacked sufficiently strong resources to teach the subject with confidence. The school visit gave ministers a visible classroom example of how the material is intended to work in practice.
Oak National Academy chief executive John Roberts said the aim was to give teachers tools for bringing discussion of the rule of law into the classroom and to help pupils understand their rights, legal protections and place in society. That framing places the programme within a broader civic literacy agenda rather than a narrow legal studies offer. For policy professionals, the announcement is a useful sign of how government is trying to embed rule-of-law teaching without introducing a new statutory duty. For teachers and parents, the near-term question is less about access, which is now free, and more about uptake: whether schools choose to use the materials consistently across different year groups.