Job description for an SMSC co-ordinator

Most schools will have an SMSC (spiritual, moral, social and cultural) co-ordinator. This is the person responsible for enabling and promoting opportunities for pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, and supporting teachers in doing this in and outside of the classroom.

The SMSC co-ordinator is often a part-time role that is combined with a teaching role or other pastoral responsibility. SMSC often overlaps with citizenship, British values and PSHE (personal, social, and health education) and therefore SMSC coordinators may also have responsibility for some or all of these areas.

In smaller primary schools it is not uncommon for the SMSC co-ordinator to be a member of the senior leadership team; in secondary schools the SMSC co-ordinator is often a teacher or pastoral leader with an additional responsibility for SMSC.

What does an SMSC Co-ordinator do?

The clue is in the title – this person will be responsible for co-ordinating the provision of spiritual, moral, social and cultural values development. Below are some specific tasks that an SMSC co-ordinator may be responsible for.

The SMSC co-ordinator may:

· Contribute to the school’s SMSC policy, vision and development plan.

· Make an annual review and assess the SMSC provision against pre-defined indicators.

· Implement systems to monitor and keep track of SMSC across the whole school.

· Carry out an initial audit to identify current SMSC strengths and weaknesses.

· Deliver (or organise the delivery of) SMSC related training/CPD sessions and training.

· Identify advocates or champions who will accelerate SMSC development.

· Run whole-school assemblies to highlight the importance of SMSC.

· Help staff identify existing activities within their lessons which deliver SMSC values.

· Encourage staff to integrate SMSC into their own lesson plans and approaches.

· Manage any budget which might be allocated to SMSC and report on its spending.

· Involve the SMT and school governors in regular reviews of activity.

· Identify and attend conferences and seminars relating to SMSC.

· Organise school trips, excursions which incorporate SMSC development

· Arrange external visitors whose activities contribute to SMSC development

· Purchase, organise and disseminate SMSC resources to teaching staff.

· Work with organisations or individuals in the community who can help deliver SMSC.

· Liaise with co-ordinators from other schools to collaborate and share best practice.

· Develop cross-curricular projects which incorporate SMSC values.

· Write extracts for the school’s newsletter, blog or website which feature SMSC.

· Engage with parents and carers through questionnaires, surveys or discussion.

· Provide staff, parents and pupils with a mechanism for feedback or suggestions.

Activities that contribute to SMSC development take place in the classroom, on trips and through extra-curricular activities.

To make it easy to monitor and evaluate all of the activity in the school related to social, moral, spiritual and cultural development, SMSC co-ordinators may use a tool like the Gridmaker, which makes it easy for teachers to record brief details about a lesson or activity and map it to relevant SMSC criteria.