SMSC? What's that, you might be saying. If you are, you're as out of touch as I am (or was). It's the thing in schools, it seems. Although it looks rather as if it might be a food supplement [ Take SMSC everyday for added BrainPower ], or something nasty that you pick up in public showers, it stands for: Spiritual Moral Social Cultural (education), and all schools in England must show how well their pupils develop it. It's the new PSHE. As a happy bonus, it seems that "British values" can be taught through SMSC, and non-statutory guidance from the DfE on how to do this is here.
Page 4 of this says:
"All maintained schools must meet the requirements set out in section 78 of the Education Act 2002 and promote the spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development of their pupils. Through ensuring pupils’ SMSC development, schools can also demonstrate they are actively promoting fundamental British values."
However, when you look at the Act, it says something rather different:
78 General requirements in relation to curriculum
(1) The curriculum for a maintained school or maintained nursery school satisfies the requirements of this section if it is a balanced and broadly based curriculum which—
(a) promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and
(b) prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.
(2) The curriculum for any funded nursery education provided otherwise than at a maintained school or maintained nursery school satisfies the requirements of this section if it is a balanced and broadly based curriculum which—
(a) promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of the pupils for whom the funded nursery education is provided and of society, and
(b) prepares those pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.
In this slight of hand, "spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development" becomes "spiritual, moral, social and cultural development" which is not the same thing. Mental and physical development has been dropped, with social introduced. Further, this obscures that part of the Act which focuses on the promotion of "the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of ... society".
The Act is, of course, statutory, but the DfE seems to be encouraging schools to ignore parts of it. How odd. Looks like a question for my new MP once she has her new email address.
Responses
May I suggest that you could ask your MP also how he/she defines all these words?! These are all weasel-words if ever I saw some. And while you are right that the two interpretations are not the same linguistically, I doubt if the impact of all that would have changed if one would just have written "and make your pupils good citizens". Oh how heart-warming that would have felt and how everyone, no matter what his or her political leanings, could have rallied behind that flag!