From Unconscious to Conscious Competence: The Future of SMSC in Schools

Paper for RSA Investigate-Ed Summit, 4 October 2013 

Mark Chater, Director, Culham St Gabriel’s Trust

The RSA is leading a series of investigations on key education issues across the UK. These aim to propose new ideas for policy and practice in response to emerging evidence and changing contexts. Speedier than a commission approach, but more in depth and reflective than a traditional seminar, these investigations will give senior policymakers, practitioners and other stakeholders structured spaces to diagnose problems and generate solutions.

The first investigation will examine the current state of play concerning SMSC for schools and pupils. In England SMSC is currently part of the Ofsted school inspection framework and included in draft National Curriculum documents. Faith schools put a premium on building spiritual and moral ethos, whilst many new academies and free schools place a strong emphasis on school ethos and character development. New learning approaches that focus on developing the emotional intelligence and social resilience to live confidently in a global context are coming to the fore. Such developments are turning the spotlight increasingly on SMSC, although other pressures on schools may also be leading to a decline in focus and provision. The promoting of community cohesion remains a legally established priority and creates a focus for exploring cultural diversity. 

The SMSC investigation will address these and other questions: How do different schools define SMSC and how successful are they in transforming their vision into effective practices? What practices enable SMSC to engage pupils and the wider community? What are the development and support needs of senior leadership teams and teachers? How effective is school inspection as a lever to focus schools on SMSC outcomes? In an era of increased autonomy over curricula, how can schools re-engage with SMSC? The investigation will analyse, through use of inspection datasets and selected school case studies, relationships between SMSC and school performance, and try to ascertain the key factors that make for effective approaches to SMSC in different contexts.

This investigation is supported by the Culham St Gabriel’s Trust, the Gordon Cook Foundation, and the Pears Foundation.

The Following think piece has been written by Mark Chater, Director of Culham St Gabriel’s Trust and has been part of the RSA SMSC Investigation.

Vision

Every learner a meaning-maker

Every learner an ethical agent

Every learner an active citizen

Every learner a creative contributor

Every learner. Every teacher. Every leader.

Summary

The spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils (SMSC) is an inspectable requirement in all maintained schools in England, and forms part of the accountability frameworks for all schools in the UK. This paper is an invitation to dialogue and collaboration. It summarises Culham St Gabriel’s starting point as a trust, supporting research, development and innovation in SMSC, ethos and RE. This paper is offered as part of the RSA’s Investigate-Ed project in SMSC. Although it is written largely from the perspective of schools in England, I hope that the issues raised can have resonance and traction across the UK.

1. SMSC: a dimension in search of a strategy

1.1 The spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils and of society has been an aim of education since 1944. It is currently an element of the school inspection framework. In an adapted form (spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical) it is part of the curriculum expectation of the new draft national curriculum documents. Although schools willingly affirm the importance of SMSC, they have variable success in implementing it. SMSC is seen as an indispensable vision and purpose of education, but as an element of the educational enterprise it is often homeless, unconnected to the wider work of the school and its community.

1.2 Normally SMSC is ‘carried’ by a number of key ingredients that include the whole curriculum and approaches to teaching, and the ethos and expectations of the school as evidenced in assemblies and the school’s dealings with parents, families and the wider community. These are exactly the same ingredients that make for school improvement and rising standards. Yet very little is made of this close connection; and in many schools SMSC activity is considered as a ‘bolt-on’ to the core business. In particular, collective worship in the sense meant by the 1988 Act (‘wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character’, as interpreted in Circular 1/94) appears to be in long-term decline in community secondary schools, where it is blurred into all-purpose assemblies and is not a strong strategic element of a community school’s overall ethos, values or curriculum aims.

1.3 Variations between schools in the quality of SMSC are becoming wider, and their need for support is becoming more complex. The churches put considerable resources into fostering the spiritual and moral ethos of their schools. They usually have a more explicit provision of SMSC and collective worship, although the latter is not yet as reflective of distinctive church school ethos as diocesan advisers would want. Section 48 inspections provide the main context for articulating how SMSC is nested in the school’s ethos, values and leadership.

1.4 However, in community schools the picture is more mixed. After the burst of government and research activity in the 1990s and despite occasional boosters since then, very little is now on offer to help teachers understand SMSC and know how to make it a reality across the curriculum in community schools. Professional development opportunities on SMSC have to compete with other priorities. The language of SMSC, particularly spirituality, is quite abstract and sometimes alarming for teachers who are not immersed in RE.

1.5 To some extent, rightly or not, SMSC has been eclipsed by overlapping initiatives that have recently come and gone, such as the duty to promote Community Cohesion, Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning, Healthy Schools, Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills and Every Child Matters. Alternative curriculum models, such as Philosophy for Children and the RSA’s Opening Minds, have also overlapped with elements of SMSC. The set of values and dispositions that accompanied the QCA three curriculum aims – successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens – enshrined some aspects of SMSC. What these initiatives have in common is their direct discourse on outcomes for pupils, making them more accessible and attractive than the quite abstract language of SMSC documents. Schools are accustomed to dealing in outcomes, so any initiative that cannot explain itself in those terms might be vulnerable. Nevertheless, many teachers recognise overlaps between the recent initiatives and the older SMSC. These overlaps serve both to enrich provision and also to confuse effort and focus. Schools are often doing more about SMSC than they think, but have difficulty in articulating it or approaching strategically. This ‘unconscious competence’ may originate partly in the difficulty of SMSC terminology and also in a confusion between SMSC as doing extra things and SMSC as a way of working.

1.6 From this overview we can derive four assumptions, all of them debatable:

a. SMSC is not composed solely of RE, or even mainly: the whole curriculum should be engaged with SMSC, although RE can take a lead in helping the whole school to understand, implement and articulate it;

b. SMSC is not ‘an extra thing’: it is embedded in the standards agenda, in all subjects, in pedagogy and in school ethos including assemblies. Raising standards and SMSC are not either/or: they need each other, since both are focused on outcomes that promote human flourishing for young people and society;

c. Schools need a definition of SMSC in their own terms, fully respecting diversity, closely engaging with the core business of teaching and learning, speaking the language of outcomes and accessible enough to be grounded in practice. They need to own their definition and be able to articulate it to each other, to the community and to inspectors;

d. Teachers and leaders at all levels of a school need to understand and articulate their school’s ethos and values in order to implement them effectively.

1.7 SMSC is a substantial and complex challenge, best met by a coherent set of interventions that bring together assembly/collective worship, school ethos and whole-curriculum thinking in a single strategy supported by a partnership of professionals at different levels.

1.8 Several recent factors add urgency to the challenge, prompting us to engage again with the needs of teachers in relation to SMSC. The structural factors are:

– The new school inspection framework’s priority on SMSC;

– The sharper Ofsted focus on school improvement;

– The emergence of new academies and free schools with diverse curriculum and ethos approaches;

– The DfE’s final repudiation of the collective worship elements of Circular 1/94, creating opportunities to define good practice in new ways.

1.9 Pedagogical factors are also at work in adding urgency and importance to a re-engagement:

– The new science of how children learn more effectively through emotional engagement, meaningful real-world contexts and useful activity;

– The moral collapse of authority structures in spiritual, moral, social and cultural contexts (churches, politics, finance, sport, media);

– The imperative that education focus on preparing children with knowledge and emotional skills to face complex global issues in the present and future rather than focussing mainly on a spiritual, ethical and cultural heritage from the past.

2. Partnership and collaboration

2.1 The time is propitious for new partnerships and networks on SMSC, using the links provided by new social and professional media and responding to the new freedoms offered to schools. We would like to start conversations with potential key partners who are recognised experts in five inter-related fields of competence that we see as essential to making SMSC work:

a. School leadership and school improvement – including SLT and governing body members who have articulated and implemented SMSC as an embedded part of school ethos, closely related to the school’s core business of teaching and learning

b. Curriculum design and pedagogy – including those practitioners who have a track record of growing capacity for SMSC in a variety of forms

c. Children and young people’s developmental needs in relation to spiritual, moral, social and cultural aspects of life – including professional perspectives from religious/belief communities, researchers, professionals in the workforce (e.g. careers, arts, counselling and chaplaincy)

d. Providers of continuing professional development and/or resources – including those whose professional ethic focuses on the whole child

e. Technical expertise in social media communication, web design and development of key messages – whose role will be crucial in designing effective interventions.

2.2 Additionally, key funding sources could be invited to take part and to consider placing their resources together, as ring-holders and partners in planning, into a well-designed effort to re-engage with SMSC. Lastly, and most importantly of all, children and young people themselves, whose evidence can identify authentic and compelling experiences, approaches and strategies in schools, are vital in gaining new understanding of effective practice.

2.3 As the RSA initiates this investigation into SMSC, partners in the five fields of competence, including funders, could collaborate with each other in an exploration of the challenge of re-engaging with SMSC. Key questions arising from the Culham St Gabriel’s perspective are:

a. How are we defining SMSC? Do schools ‘get’ the definitions on offer? Do they need help in taking ownership of their definition at all levels?

b. What has changed in school-based provision of SMSC? Does the focus on outcomes, rather than provision, change the way SMSC needs to be addressed?

c. What are the children and young people telling us about SMSC needs and school responses?

d. What kind of intervention is needed? Do we have the right partners for it? For example, would a suite of case studies, leading from the heart of the school’s mission and inviting partners to adapt, be helpful?

e. Who is willing to work collaboratively in developing proposals for re-engagement?

I look forward to working with all partners in this investigation and in any collaborations that emerges our discussions.

Read this think piece as a pdf: http://reonlineorg.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Final-Draft-Mark-Chater-SMSC-Thinkpiece.pdf

Read a related blog post by Jonathan Rowson, Director of  the RSA’s Social Brain Centre, which is working on a 20-month project called ‘Spirituality, tools of the mind, and the social brain’. It will culminate in a final report and event at the RSA: http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/journal/archive/summer-2013/features/the-brains-behind-spirituality