In the 'Education and Training for Work 2010' publication the European Commissio (2001) stressed that future Europeans will need certain 'key competencies' one of which is civic competency. This will require a citizen to have the knowledge, skills and correct attitude to participate in their relevant democratic system requiring at least a minimum political literacy level and interest. Currently however there is public dissatisfaction with democratic processes which is not unique to Scotland and has resulted in declines of voter turnout with research reflecting a democratic deficit (Curtice and Seyd 2004, Putnam, 2000). This deficit has become particularly worrying with regard to the participation of youth in the electoral process, many of whom are not fully utilising their citizenship rights. One response has been to encourage people in general to re-connect with government and communities by becoming active citizens. This focus on citizenship has resulted in many European countries developing citizenship education programmes as Scotland has.

Responsible citizenship has been propounded for over a decade within Scottish education and is now one of the key capacities of the curriculum for Excellence (2004), the key guidance which all schools are expected to follow. The discussion paper 'Education for Citizenship' (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2002) states that the four elements of citizenship education are required to be woven throughout other areas of the curriculum. The elements are economic, social, cultural and political refelecting the key competencies required by the European Commission (2001). Since the publication of the discussion paper there have been major developments in the teaching of financial literacy, enterprise, social education and multicultural / international education but there has been little curricular development of political literacy. This raises the risk that young people are not being empowered to become political actors- they may be unawer that local improvement often requires collective action and be unsure of the processes to achieve this.

Currently any development of political literacy in Scottish schools is delivered by teachers. The author proposes that greater involvement of local government politicians in this process would strengthen young peoples' knowledge of democratic proceedings but that in order for this to be succcessful it is necessary to ascertain what local politicians know of education for citizenship in their authority and how this might be improved. The initial research question for this paper was therefore to investigate local government politicians' knowledge of citizenship education in Scotland in order to gauge the potential for their further engagement in developing political literacy in youth. A secondary question is to compare their involvement and understanding to that of local politicians in other European states in order to form a political literacy development programme which produces optimum results for all young citizens.

Curtice, J and Seyd, B. (2004) Is there a crisis in political participation? BSA 20th ed. NCSR. London. Sage European Commission (2001) Education and training for Work 2010. European Commission Learning Teaching Scotland (2002) Education for Citizenship: a paper for discussion and consultation, Dundee, Learning Teaching Scotland Putnam, R. (2000) Active Citizenship in Schools. London Kogan Page Scottish Executive (2004) A Curriculum for Excellence, Edinburgh, Scottish Executive