PSHEE: Led by Miss Garner

Our bespoke curriculum:

'Keeping Ourselves Happy, Healthy and Safe.' 

The nature of PSHEE

PSHEE is the key building blocks of healthy, respectful relationships, focusing on family and friendships, in all contexts, including online. This will sit alongside the essential understanding of how to be healthy. Teaching about mental wellbeing is central to these subjects, especially as a priority for parents is their children’s happiness. We know that children and young people are increasingly experiencing challenges, and that young people are at particular risk of feeling lonely. PSHEE supports and foster children’ wellbeing and develops resilience and character that we know are fundamental to children being happy, successful, and productive members of society. Central to this is children ‘ability to believe that they can achieve goals, both academic and personal; to stick to tasks that will help them achieve those goals, even when the reward may be distant or uncertain; and to recover from knocks and challenging periods in their lives. This should be complemented by development of personal attributes including kindness, integrity, generosity, and honesty. PSHEE represent a huge opportunity to help our children and young people develop. The knowledge and attributes gained will support their own, and others’, wellbeing and attainment and help young people to become successful and happy adults who make a meaningful contribution to society.

Curriculum Intent

We believe each child should be valued and understood as an individual; academically, socially, emotionally and as a spiritual being.  The principal focus of our Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) teaching is to enable our children to become healthy, independent, and responsible members of society. 

Our RSHE curriculum aims to help children to understand how they are developing personally and socially, and tackles many of the moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up.

Through our RSHE curriculum children will have opportunities to get to know and value who they are.  They will develop their sense of self-worth by learning how to play a positive role in school life and the wider community.  They will learn how to relate to other people in this ever-changing world and to develop positive relationships with themselves and others. They will also appreciate what it means to be a member of a diverse society and to understand that they have rights and responsibilities.

The emotional health and wellbeing of children is important if they are to reach their full potential. Our RSHE curriculum teaches children how to nurture their emotional health tackling issues that can affect their ability to learn, such as anxiety and unhealthy relationships. Our children will also learn about the importance of physical health and how our bodies change and feel as we grow.

Through our RSHE curriculum children will learn about risk so we can equip them with the knowledge and skills necessary to make safe and informed decisions. They will develop their own values as they realise what is important to them.

Implementation

We follow DfE Statutory guidance when delivering RSHE, but we also utilise a number of teaching materials and resources such as a Personal, Social, Health Education (PSHE) and wellbeing programme called Jigsaw. This is a progressive, and effective scheme of work which has a strong emphasis on emotional literacy, building resilience and nurturing mental and physical health. Jigsaw lessons also include mindfulness allowing children to advance their emotional awareness, concentration, and focus.

In addition, each year group focuses on a lesson from The Expect Respect Educational Toolkit. It consists of a ‘Core’ lesson for each year group based on age-appropriate themes that have been found to be effective in promoting healthy, positive relationships.

Teaching children to be accepting of each other gives a sense of belonging to any child who feels different and helps them to know it’s okay to be themselves. It’s also important for children to learn that families come in different shapes and sizes, including those with same-sex parents.  Our children learn about Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, Transgender and Questioning sexuality (LGBT+) in an age-appropriate way through the Stonewall lessons and resources. These lessons help children understand the importance of equality and respect.

The programmes we use provide discreet lessons, but RSHE can also be taught through Religious Education, Science, Computing and Physical Education.  These cross curricular links enable staff to ensure full coverage of the RSHE curriculum content.

RSHE is also an important part of school assemblies and collective worship where children’s spiritual, moral, social, and cultural curiosity is stimulated, challenged and nurtured. We deliver the RSHE curriculum by utilising first-hand experience, sharing good practice and through our positive behaviour systems.

There are also occasions where staff may feel it necessary to teach RSHE as a result of an issue which has arisen within school or the local community

Substantive and disciplinary knowledge in PSHEE

Substantive knowledge in PSHE is underpinned by 6 key concepts:

1. Being me in my world: Includes understanding my place in the class, school and global community as well as devising Learning Charters.
2. Celebrating difference: Includes anti-bullying (cyber and homophobic bullying included) and diversity work.
3. Dreams and goals: Includes goal setting, aspirations for yourself and the world and working together.
4. Healthy me: Includes drugs and alcohol education, self-esteem, and confidence as well as healthy lifestyle choices.
5. Relationships: Includes understanding friendship, family and other relationships, conflict resolution and communication skills.
6. Changing me: This puzzle includes sex and relationships education in the context of coping positively with change. (includes age-appropriate sex education).

Each PSHE lesson is underpinned by the following 6 disciplinary knowledge concepts:

1. Connect us: Developing the ability to take enjoyment from their learning, to be inclusive learners and to build and maximise social skills. Children are encouraged to build positive relationships and take part in collaborative learning.
2. Calm me: Children gain awareness of the activity in their minds, relaxing them and quietening their thoughts and emotions to a place of optimum learning capacity.
3. Open my mind: Developing the ability to filter the many stimuli entering the child’s mind at any given time. The aim here is to improve concentration and learning by filtering out activity around them.
4. Tell me or show me: Children are encouraged to introduce new information, concepts and skills, using a range of approaches and activities.
5. Let me learn: Developing children’s ability to manipulate, use and play with new information in order for it to make sense to them and for them to ‘accommodate’ it into their existing learning.
6. Help me reflect: Children are encouraged to reflect on their learning experiences and their progress. By reflecting, children can process and evaluate what they have learnt, which enables them to consolidate and apply their learning.

PSHE, RSHE, RSE, SMSC and British Values Statement

Our bespoke curriculum 'Keeping Ourselves Happy, Healthy and Safe' comprises not just of PSHEE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education) but also includes resilience, mental health, emotional literacy, social and employability skills, British values, and SMSC (spiritual, moral, social, cultural development), as well as an inclusive philosophy including RSHE and Relationship and Sex Education.

Please click the links below to access the following documents for PSHEE:

PSHEE Policy

Long term plan

Knowledge and Skills Progression