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Take the Today citizenship test.
Every year around 60,000 people apply to become British citizens. Immigration records will give us copious detail on things like who these people are, where they come from and what their general backgrounds are. But what we do not know is what they know about Britain, the country they wish to make their permanent home.
This very fact led the 91热爆 Secretary, David Blunkett to suggest recently that all future immigrants may be required to attend citizenship classes and English language lessons. Others say we should go further and insist that all aspiring citizens should be made to sit an American style citizenship test first. This would include a selection of questions on the country's history, constitution and laws.
But what questions should any equivalent British test ask? To find answers this programme gathered together a group of eminent people from a variety of backgrounds. From the world of politics we had the Labour MP, Barry Sheerman , who Chairs the Commons Select Committee on Education and Skills. He was joined by Historian Andrew Roberts, the Deputy Chairman of the Greater London Assembley, Trevor Philips, Zara Joseph of the British Muslim Council and Doctor Madsen Pirie of the right leaning think tank, The Adam Smith Institute.
Most agreed that those seeking British citizenship should be tested on their knowledge of Britain. So we asked our panel to agree on ten questions that aspiring citizens could be asked. To test them out we invited Today listeners to log on to this web site and see how many they could get right. Within three days more than 40,000 people had tried the test and more are continuing to do so.
Meanwhile this programme decided to sample some other opinions by taking the test to the people of Nottingham. We visited two school and interviewed a wide variety of people. With the help of an interpreter a group of five asylum seekers from Iran tried their luck. But the only question most got right was; What did Guy Fawkes famously fail to do? Perhaps the near proximity of Guy Fawkes night might have helped there. Then there was a group of pub goers who all agreed that the law did allow a man to physically punish his wife as long as it was in his own home. We also spoke to some surprisingly clued up primary school children who collectively got eight out of ten questions right. Sadly, their head teacher, who gamely agreed to sit the test before her pupils, managed just four correct answers. Her excuse? "I was just a bit nervous" adding "it must have been that huge microphone."
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