SMSC
Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural education provides students with opportunities to reflect on their experiences, helping them to responsibly manage and understand a range of behaviours and situations as they develop. SMSC promotes respect for diversity and the differences that exist between people, developing our students' well-being, self-esteem and promoting strong achievement. SMSC is promoted at Leeds East Academy across all subjects, and enhanced through, Assemblies, the Guardian Time programme and through specialist workshops.
Social: Using social skills appropriately in different contexts and understanding how different groups and communities function, being tolerant of others.
Moral: Recognising right and wrong, understanding choices and consequences, investigating moral and ethical issues and being able to offer a reasoned viewpoint.
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.
Cultural: Understand, accept, respect and celebrate diversity, participating in cultural opportunities and understand and appreciate cultural influences.
How do 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.
Our SMSC/Capital Culture audit will map where our students experience these influences in our school, in addition to this we have other SMSC activities that further promote fundamental British values.
As a result of this work, we expect from our students:
- An understanding of how they as citizens, in our school 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 school but also is against the law
- An understanding of the importance of identifying discriminatory behaviours and actions and understanding that action needs to be taken to combat such behaviours