Fundamental British Values (Summer School videos)

SMSC - This stands for Spiritual, Moral, Social, and Cultural development, and it's a key aspect of education in the UK. Essentially, SMSC is about helping students develop a range of personal and social skills that will enable them to become well-rounded, responsible, and engaged members of society.

Three ways that schools might support its development includes:

- Encouraging students to take responsibility for their own learning and personal development.

- Creating opportunities for students to participate in leadership roles, peer mentoring, or community service projects.

- Catholic & Church of England Schools might promote Christian values such as compassion, forgiveness, and social justice.

Some consequences of your role outside of school as well as within it (explained in part Two of the Teachers’ Standards) being to show tolerance and respect for rights of others and to not undermine FBV:

Engaging in extremist political parties - undermines FBV and additionally subscribes to belief that some students are not to be considered equal to others. -May lead to loss of Job as of 2010. - As a consequence of your role as a teacher, you must not align with any extremist political parties or political movement.

Events/drivers/factors that bring about 'Fundamental British Values':

- Contest - Counter terrorism strategy (first appeared in 2006) Four principles: Prevent, Pursue Protect and Prepare. This strategy was aimed to ensure that groups that go directly against FBV do not influence the lives of children.

- BNP members banned from teaching (2010) as signing up for values contradictory to FBV.

- Teachers' standards guide published (2011) - Personal and professional conduct, eliminating teachers with extreme views.

- Prevent duty - (2015) - All schools in the exercise of their functions, to have "due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism".

Prevent duty is currently under review:

This should come out later this year.

It is already considered contra-versial due to its pursuit of right-wing extremism too much. It needs to refocus to avoid Islamophobia.

Should schools be promoting values in the first place?

'A society that granted individuals the right to live according to their own values but did not grant them the right to raise their children according to those values would not be a free society. It would only be a society in which individual liberty was strangled slowly instead of abruptly.' (Bereiter. 1973)

Comes from the perspective that parents should teach values and schools should teach subject knowledge.

Hand 2014 - Argues that we need to not only encourage appropriate values but also discuss why they are worth having. Two components to full moral commitment to a standard:

A) A disposition/ tendency to act

B) A belief that subscription is justified

Types of values:

Personal/ Arbitrary - Exercise, Reading

Professional - Polite, Punctual

Moral/ Public - Democracy, tolerance

Values are inherent in teaching, Teachers are by the nature of their profession moral agents who imply values by the way they address pupils and each other, the way they dress, the language they use and the effort they put into their work. (National Curriculum Council. 1993).

Should we approach the teaching of FBV from a ‘softly directive’ stance (as opposed to a closed or open stance)?

A - Non-contraversial = teaching as closed = directive

B - Contraversial = teaching as open = non directive

In the middle we have softly directive = Explicit in endorsement, but open to discussion (fallibalist)

Soft directive teaching combines a tone of fallibilism and openness to being challenged with an explicitly endorsed position. Suggests that the evidence points towards conclusions and facts given, acknowledges that the taught values are open to interpretation, endorsing knowledge in a way that is discursive. This allows you to teach, without forcing values or indoctrinating children. It could be done in a way that is ethically sound compared to closed and more open stances, so I do agree completely that we should approach the teaching of FBV from a ‘softly directive’ stance.

Is the term 'Fundamental British Values' problematic?

Yes, it implies that all people who are born into Britain should assimilate and subscribe to these supposedly inherent beliefs. To what means or standards makes someone or something British? and which of the many histories and cultures within Britain demonstrate and do we model British values from?

Approaches for promoting FBV:

Sometimes the promotion of FBV in a classroom is just coming together and discussing why the rules of the school have been put in place.

Hudson (1980) outlines several kinds of respect.

Evaluative respect - respect given to persons on the basis of their achievements or personal qualities. (e.g. respect for a great artist)

Obstacle respect - respect given to things that stand in the way of other things from progressing (e.g. respect for the ocean for creating boundaries between nations)

Institutional respect - respect given as representatives of institutions. (e.g. respect for a Judge)

Similarly we can encourage FBV is by having a classroom that respects 'Sentience', 'the autonomy of others' and 'cultural difference'.

I think that this is important, especially when applying a softly directive stance and openly discussing with students the importance and reasons why rules are put in place and enforced within the school.

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