Welcome

Welcome to Young Citizens' introductory course 'Making sense of SMSC'.

This course is suitable for anyone involved in teaching or education and it should take around three hours to complete fully. You don't need to have any prior knowledge in order to take this course but if you do, it will add to your knowledge and understanding.

You can sit down and do the course all in one go, or you can complete it in several sittings. And remember - now that you are registered on this course you can come back and review it as many times as you like, for as long as you like.

There are three short multiple choice quizzes for you to complete within the course to test your learning as you progress through the course. You'll need to get 100% in each quiz in order to be able to progress, but you can repeat a quiz several times if you need to so don't worry!

Please note as well that you need to watch the videos as they are all part of the learning. If you find that you can't move on from a page it is most likely this is the most likely reason.

Course objectives

This course will enable you to:

• Explore what SMSC is and why it’s important;
• Consider how SMSC can be embedded throughout your school;
• Look at how SMSC can support fundamental British values, character education and help to build cultural capital 
• Understand what Ofsted says about SMSC and the value the new framework places on this;
• Look at practical ways you can support your school to develop and maintain outstanding SMSC provision.

Before we start

Hopefully you're here doing this course because you're an educator interested in developing the whole child, and that's what this course is going to help you explore.

So before we go any further, take a moment to reflect on and answer the following questions. Please note - you'll find short reflective tasks like this at the end of many of the sections. To make it easier we've also put these questions into a reflective journal for you to download (below) and fill in as you go along. This will help you to pause to consider your answers and to help make sure that your learning comes off the screen and into your day-to-day practice.

• What is school for?
• What do pupils need to know – what is the best curriculum for my school?
• What attitudes and dispositions do I want my pupils to develop?
• What qualities do I want my pupils to have by the time they leave my school?

SMSC - equipping pupils for the whole of life

Before we move on take a minute to listen to Steve Chalke, MBE, founder of the Oasis Academy Trust, describe the importance of an SMSC rich education which not only benefits pupils and their families now but that equips them for the whole of their lives.

Please note: If you are struggling to see the video below it may be because you are using the browser Internet Explorer. Try moving to Chrome and you should be able to see the video. Remember - you will need to watch the video all the way through in order to be able to move onto the next page!