Our Personal, Social, Health & Economic (PSHE) education, including statutory Relationships and Health education, and non-statutory sex education, as recommended by the DfE, provides a framework through which key skills, attributes and knowledge can be developed and applied. This promotes positive behaviour, good mental health and wellbeing, resilience and achievement, helping children to stay safe online, develop healthy and safe relationships, making sense of media messages, challenging extreme views and having the skills and attributes to negotiate and assert themselves now and in the future.
The school’s PSHE provision supports our aims of developing confident citizens and successful learners who are creative, resourceful and able to identify and solve problems. The social and emotional development of pupils is embedded throughout the entire school’s curriculum and culture. The school has a powerful combination of a planned thematic PSHE program, built around a spiral curriculum of recurring themes, designed to:
- Give pupils the knowledge and develop the self-esteem, confidence and self-awareness to make informed choices and decisions;
- Encourage and support the development of social skills and social awareness;
- Enable pupils to make sense of their own personal and social experiences;
- Promote responsible attitudes towards the maintenance of good physical and mental health, supported by a safe and healthy lifestyle;
- Enable effective interpersonal relationships and develop a caring attitude towards others;
- Encourage a caring attitude towards and responsibility for the environment;
- Help our pupils understand and manage their feelings, build resilience and be independent, curious problem solvers;
- Understand how society works and the laws, rights and responsibilities involved.
We know there is a proven link between pupils’ health and wellbeing, and their academic progress. Crucial skills and positive attitudes developed through comprehensive Personal, Social, Health and Economic education are critical to ensuring children are effective learners.
Our policy, long term planning, medium term planning and parent information letters provide more details about the provision for PSHE and RSE for pupils at Featherstone All Saints CE Academy. Should you wish to share any concerns, ideas or suggestions, or find out any further information, we have an open-door policy and will be more than happy to discuss these with you.
How PSHE education, including Relationships Education, is provided and who is responsible for this
At Featherstone All Saints CofE Academy we use SCARF (a scheme of learning built around the values of Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience and Friendship) to provide a comprehensive scheme of work for PSHE and Wellbeing education. An overview of SCARF can be found in our appendices. It covers all of the DfE’s new statutory requirements for Relationships Education and Health Education, including non-statutory Sex Education, and the PSHE Association’s Programme of Study’s recommended learning opportunities, as well as contributing to different subject areas in the National Curriculum.
We follow the six suggested half termly units and adapt the scheme of work where necessary to meet the local circumstances of our school, for example, we may use our local environment as the starting point for aspects of our work. Pupils are also consulted as part of our planning, to ensure pupil voice in considered and fed into the planned programme.
The Early Years Foundation Stage
In the Early Years Foundation Stage, PSHE education is about making connections; it’s strongly linked to child-led activities, including play. PSHE is taught through activities that are part of topics, as well as on an individual basis to develop personal skills such as dressing, feeding and toileting. Positive experiences are built through daily opportunities, to share and enjoy a range of different activities. Children are given the opportunity to engage in social activities, as members of a small group or occasionally during whole-school activities.
KS1 and KS2
The SCARF programme divides the year into 6 themed units:
- Me and My Relationships: includes content on feelings, emotions, conflict resolution and friendships;
- Valuing Difference: a focus on respectful relationships and British values;
- Keeping Myself Safe: looking at keeping ourselves healthy and safe
- Rights and Responsibilities: learning about money, living the wider world and the environment;
- Being My Best: developing skills in keeping healthy, developing a growth mindset (resilience), goal-setting and achievement;
- Growing and Changing: finding out about the human body, the changes that take place from birth to old age and being safe.