Understanding British Values in Primary Schools

Policy and practice

Joy Carroll, Colin Howard, Bridget Knight, Author

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781526408419
  9781526408402
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526416360
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teacher Training

Schools must actively promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs. The Teachers? Standards make it clear that teachers themselves must do nothing to undermine these fundamental British Values.

So how do schools and teachers provide educational experiences for primary aged children that explore and promote these values?

This text provides trainees, teachers and schools with practice-based advice, informed by current practitioners, relating to the delivery of 'British Values?. The content covers many topical themes and provides a unique insight into delivering 'British Values' in schools. It supports educational professionals to understand their duties around the PREVENT agenda and goes further to explore why this is important. It helps trainees and teachers to see how these ?values? fit within the wider context of education and what we value as educators.

1 An Introduction to British Values in Primary Schools

This chapter explores:

• the definition of values in education, including British Values;
• the importance of values in education;
• the relationship between British Values and the National Curriculum 2014;
• strategies that promote the effective delivery of values-based education.

Teachers’ Standards

This chapter is linked to the following Teachers’ Standards and includes examples of how they can be integrated into the classroom:

TS1: Set high expectations which inspire, motivate and challenge pupils:

• a safe and stimulating environment for pupils, rooted in mutual respect;
• demonstrate consistently the positive attitudes, values and behaviour which are expected of pupils.

Part Two: Personal and professional conduct

Teachers uphold public trust in the profession and maintain high standards of ethics and behaviour, within and outside school, by:

• treating pupils with dignity, building relationships rooted in mutual respect, and at all times observing proper boundaries appropriate to a teacher’s professional position;
• not undermining fundamental British Values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs;
• ensuring that personal beliefs are not expressed in ways which exploit pupils’ vulnerability or might lead them to break the law.

The introduction of the term ‘fundamental British Values’ within the Teachers’ Standards has led to a growth and development of the subject (Lander, 2016). Interest has increased considerably, reaching all who are involved in education from initial teacher education through to qualified teachers, children, parents and governors.

The development and context of values in education

It is important that any examination of the requirement of schools to teach British Values is placed in the context of the historic debate surrounding values in education. The introduction of the promotion of British Values through education emerged in 2012 under the UK Coalition government. At this time it was conceived as part of a wider government agenda to seek to prevent vulnerable individuals being radicalised and therefore being drawn into terrorism (VICTVS, 2013; Department for Education and Lord Nash, 2014) as part of the government’s ongoing Prevent Strategy agenda (HM Government, 2011). As part of this approach, schools are therefore now required to teach about and explore the British Values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs (Department for Education, 2014a).

The promotion of British Values through education and training must start with an agreement and shared understanding of what is meant by Britishness.

Key Questions

• What is Britishness?
• What are British Values?

Questions have been raised about whether or not the values listed above are indeed distinctive to Britain (Maylor, 2016). Yet, to ensure the future of a society that is multi-ethnic it was deemed important to define what unites the people of Britain. A definition emerged that stated, ‘To be British mean[s] that we respect the laws, the parliamentary and democratic political structures, traditional values of mutual tolerance, respect for equal rights’ (Maylor, 2016).

The government aims to ensure that British Values are not undermined through a teacher’s influence in the classroom (Maylor, 2016). As a teacher, you are a role model for children and their families, and as such you are a significant factor in promoting values and upholding trust. For many schools such an approach has meant a revisiting and remodelling of their current policy and practice around the humanistic or Christian values that often underpin schools.

The history of values in British education

Copley (2000, p.10) identifies that, in 1993, ‘Spiritual and Moral Development – a discussion paper by the National Curriculum Council’ (first issued by NCC in 1993, reissued by SCAA in 1995, p.5) identified component aspects of spiritual development: beliefs, experience of transience, inspiration from the natural world, mystery or human achievement, the search for meaning and purpose. It was also explicit about the moral values schools should promote, and those it should reject: bullying, cheating, deceit, cruelty, irresponsibility and dishonesty. Pupils should leave school able to articulate their own attitudes and values. Schools were therefore encouraged to agree and promote core values acceptable to all the community, but there was little guidance or resources to enable them to do this in a coherent and effective fashion.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), ratified by HM Government in 1991, gives significant endorsement to the notion of values (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1989). Further, the establishment of the Values Education Council in the UK in 1995 aimed to bring together organisations with a shared interest in ‘values education’, its purpose being ‘the promotion and development of values in the context of education as a lifelong process, to help individuals develop as responsible and caring persons and live as participating members of a pluralistic society’ (Taylor, 1995, p.24, in Halstead and Taylor (eds), 1996, p.8).

This theme was espoused in the 1996 National Symposium, initiated by the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA), which began a process of national consultation on the spiritual and moral dimensions of the curriculum. It set out to discover whether there were any values on which there was agreement across society and then to decide how society in general and SCAA in particular might best support spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development. According to Deakin-Crick (2002, p.132), this was a landmark and raised the level of debate through a wide consultation process.

Educating for values or values education and its place in the primary school

The resurgence of interest in values education in the United Kingdom began way before British Values was conceptualised. It owes much to the statutory requirement that the SMSC development of pupils should be subject to official inspection.

British Values and their place within the OFSTED inspection agenda

The importance of values in education is endorsed by the School inspection handbook (OFSTED, 2017), which acts as a catalyst for schools to reappraise their values education. Inspectors must evaluate ‘the effectiveness and impact of the provision for pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development’ (p.38).

The OFSTED Framework ‘grades’ provision and outcomes in the area through examining the effectiveness of the school’s provision for SMSC education.

The School inspection handbook: handbook for inspecting schools in England under section 5 of the Education Act 2005 (OFSTED, 2017) requires inspectors to make key judgements of schools on the following areas:

• overall effectiveness;
• leadership and management;
• quality of teaching, learning and assessment;
• personal behaviour, development and welfare;
• outcomes for pupils.

The inspection handbook uses a four point scale:

• Grade 1: outstanding
• Grade 2: good
• Grade 3: requires improvement
• Grade 4: inadequate.

SMSC is threaded through all these key areas of judgement by OFSTED, sitting perhaps most explicitly in the section for personal behaviour, development and welfare.

The OFSTED handbook (2017, p.35) defines SMSC in the following terms with specific references to British Values:

The spiritual development of pupils is shown by their:

• ability to be reflective about their own beliefs, religious or otherwise, that inform their perspective on life and their interest in and respect for different people’s faiths, feelings or values;
• sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning about themselves, others and the world around them;
• use of imagination and creativity in their learning;
• willingness to reflect on their experiences.

The moral development of pupils is shown by their:

• ability to recognise the difference between right and wrong and to readily apply this understanding in their own lives, recognise legal boundaries and, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Authors
• 1 An Introduction to British Values in Primary Schools
• 2 Democracy
• 3 Individual Liberty
• 4 The Rule of Law
• 5 Mutual Respect and Tolerance
• 6 A Whole School Approach to British Values
• Index