SMSC

Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development

Definition

Everyone who works in school is responsible for promoting spiritual, moral, social and cultural values to our children.

Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development (SMSC) is promoted not only through all the subjects of the curriculum but also through the ethos of the school. We create the ethos by teaching and modelling positive attitudes and values and by giving the children opportunities to experience and develop these attitudes for themselves.

Principles

The four different elements of SMSC together help to develop children’s learning about what are good and positive ways of thinking and behaving. This is crucial for individual pupils to be able to develop a feeling of positivity about themselves and others. This in turn impacts on the way the child will interact positively in society as a whole as they grow.

We believe it is the heart of what education is all about — helping pupils grow and develop as people; creating children who understand themselves and others and therefore are able to work in harmony with those who are different to themselves.

The greatest examples the children have in school are the teachers and support staff who spend the most time with the children. Their constant role modelling of SMSC values with each other and the children create positive relationships. This is the key to SMSC being successfully taught because it is all about how we chose to react to what is going on around us.

The key points in developing positive relationships are:

• respecting each other
  which means learning to understand why someone is different to us and why they do different things
• positive attitudes towards each other
  learning to enjoy the things that others value and feeling good for them when they do well at something; finding things to like about them
• willingness to listen and be listened to
  valuing what others have to say and not just thinking about our own thoughts or needs; being willing to help others with their problems
• valuing what each other has to offer
  enjoying what other people do; not being jealous of them; being willing to accept help from them

We can all make a difference in each other’s life by the way we treat each other. SMSC helps all of us to learn positive ways of engaging fully with life so that it becomes an exciting and purposeful experience.