British Educational Research Journal

The transition from the 20th to the 21st century has been the stage of contradictory messages regarding youth citizenship. There is a powerful public and academic rhetoric on youth political disengagement and apathy and, concurrently, an assumption that young people are not knowledgeable, competent and responsible enough to be active citizens, and therefore some kind of ‘education’ should be provided to them. Over this landscape, citizenship education in schools has been the object of fluctuations in European educational policy, from a relative absence to becoming the central transversal goal of education, and back again. This paper contrasts educational policies with the vision of school practice by significant actors (in this case, NGOs working in the field of citizenship education), departing from a cross‐European analysis to focus on the specific experience of Portugal and England. On the whole, results suggest that the political disinvestment might be reinforcing the ‘NGOisation’ of citizenship education, a phenomena that has both advantages and risks. If ‘all that comes in threes is perfect’ then education policies must provide a coherent framework that would guide schools and NGOs in collaboratively fostering opportunities to practice citizenship and learn democracy in and out of schools.