Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development (SMSC) and British Values

Spiritual: Exploring beliefs and experiences, respecting values, discover yourself and the surrounding world and your place within it, using imagination and creativity and being able to reflect as an individual.
Moral: Recognising right and wrong, understanding choices and consequences, investigating moral and ethical issues and being able to offer a reasoned viewpoint.
Social: Using social skills appropriately in different contexts and understanding how different groups and communities function, being tolerant of others.
Cultural: Understand, accept, respect and celebrate diversity, participating in cultural opportunities and understand and appreciate cultural influences.

How we promote SMSC Development in our students?

In our changing world and local communities, it is also important to promote fundamental British values as part of SMSC and this includes celebrating our strong vision and ethos, encouraging and supporting students to develop effective relationships, providing a broad and balanced curriculum whilst offering activities beyond the classroom.

All of our students are encouraged to regard people of all faiths, races and cultures with respect and tolerance. We also promote the British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance. By actively promoting these values we challenge anyone in our school community whose opinions or behaviours undermine these core beliefs. Students are given the opportunity to develop SMSC and British values through the curriculum, the Personal Development curriculum, assemblies and drop down days. The provision is mapped across all subject areas. Some of the opportunities within the programme include:

Holocaust Memorial Day activities
Mental health awareness
Road safety awareness
Theatre performances and workshops
The First Give programme

This enables students to:

Develop their self-knowledge, self-esteem and self-confidence
Distinguish right from wrong and to respect the law of England
Accept responsibility for their behaviour, show initiative and understand how they can contribute positively to their academy and community
Develop tolerance of others and their faith/beliefs
Encourage respect for others

As a result of this work we expect from our students to have:

An understanding of how they as citizens, in our academy and in their local community, can bring about influence through a democratic process
An understanding regarding the rule of law and how it aims to protect individuals and the need for it to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all
An understanding of the freedom of choice, particularly related to choice regarding faith and beliefs, and how these choices are protected in law
An acceptance of others who hold differing beliefs, faiths and opinions and that tolerance is required and how discriminatory or prejudicial behaviour is against the values and ethos of this academy but also is against the law
An understanding of the importance of identifying discriminatory behaviours and actions and also understanding that action needs to be taken to combat such behaviours

As part of our approach to British Values, we take very seriously our public sector equality duty (s.149 of the Equality Act 2010) which requires us to have due regard of the need to:

eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under that Act;
advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it;
foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.

NB: parts of the above are taken from ‘Promoting fundamental British values as part of SMSC in schools’ – DFE, November 2014