“PSHE in primary school is about making sure children and young people have the skills they need to grow up as healthy individuals who can make informed decisions about their lives.” Anne Longfield

 INTENT

What do we teach? Why do we teach it?

Personal Social Health Education (PSHE) including Relationships Sex Education (RSE) is at the heart of our school values and ethos and runs throughout all that we do. Our PSHE/RSE curriculum aims to enable our children to become healthy, safe, independent, responsible members of society who demonstrate respect and tolerance and who are prepared to face and manage the challenges and opportunities of an ever-changing modern Britain.

The teaching and learning of PSHE at STA helps us to embed our school values: of being Ready, Respectful and Safe. It fosters mindfulness skills and supports the children to develop wider Values for Life through our extensive web of opportunities for personal development. This also includes an understanding of some of the key British Values, which are embedded through our PSHE curriculum and wider STA Values for Life.

 We will:

• Help children know how they can keep themselves safe from harm – including physically, emotionally and online.
• Help our children to build resilience, independence and confidence; embrace challenge; foster a love of learning; and increase their level of happiness. We do this through the language we use in class, praising children for their efforts, and using language to encourage children to explain and be prepared to challenge their way of thinking.
• Help children to aspire to be the best they can be, to have dreams for their future and know what is required to reach them.
• Provide opportunities for our children to learn about rights and responsibilities and appreciate what it means to be a valuable member of an ever-changing diverse society.
• Develop their sense of self-worth by playing a positive role in contributing to school life and the wider community.
• Stimulate, challenge and nurture children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural curiosity.
• Help children to understand the importance of their physical and mental health, understand emotions and feelings and have strategies to help them become resilient and confident so they are ready for the transition to Secondary school.
• Help children to have a good understanding of themselves, to have empathy, an ability to work with others and to form and maintain positive relationships treating everyone equally
• Teach our children an age-appropriate understanding of healthy relationships through appropriate relationship and sex education.
• Teach our children about personal safety (online and off-line) and we will ensure children know where and how to get help if needed.
• Encourage all of our children to be the best version of themselves that they can be.

IMPLEMENTATION

How do we teach and assess and how does this look in practice?

At Sir Thomas Abney we use the Jigsaw Scheme of Work to help us to teach the PSHE curriculum. Topics included are:

• Celebrating Difference and Diversity
• Careers
• Drug, alcohol and tobacco education
• Financial capability and economic wellbeing
• Identity, society and equality
• Keeping safe and managing risk
• Mental health and emotional wellbeing
• Physical health and wellbeing
• Sex and relationship education

 We have a broad and balanced curriculum which provides opportunities for effective SMSC development. SMSC is promoted throughout the wider curriculum (please see curriculum maps for full breakdown); in PSHE; regular assemblies; lessons and school activities such as fundraising, celebrations of special festivals and events in the global calendar; and links with the local/wider community. Children are also given the opportunity to prepare well for life in modern Britain through attending a wide range of school trips.

For more details, please also see our PSHE Curriculum Overview; STA Values for Life overview; Vocabulary Progression Map.

IMPACT

By the time our children leave our school they will:

• Be able to approach a range of real-life situations and apply their values to help navigate themselves safely through modern life
• Be on their way to becoming healthy, open minded, respectful, socially and morally responsible, active members of society
• Value difference and diversity
• Be able to understand and manage their emotions
• Be able to look after their mental health and well-being
• Be able to develop positive, healthy relationship with their peers both now and in the future
• Understand the physical and emotional aspects involved in RSE at an age appropriate level
• Have respect for themselves and others.

 Our priority at Sir Thomas Abney is to ensure all children are safe and happy at school and in the wider community. We encourage our children to play a positive role in the community. Some of these include: choosing to support their own charities through the First Give program, SuperKind membership, writing to their MP and volunteering to take on extra responsibilities in school.

Relationships Sex and Health Education is taught as part of our PSHE curriculum and the school's policy can be found below:

PSHE & Relationships Sex and Health (RSHE) Policy

DfE Parent Carer Guide to Relationships Sex and Health Education

Jigsaw LGBT Parent Leaflet A4

Department for Education guidance states that, all primary schools must teach Relationships and Health Education. The teaching of Sex Education in primary schools remains non-statutory, with the exception of the elements of sex education contained in the science national curriculum including the main external body parts, the human life cycle (including puberty) and reproduction in some plants and animals. Other related topics that fall within the statutory requirements for Health Education, such as puberty and menstrual wellbeing, will be included within PSHE education lessons.

Within the statutory guidance document for RSE and Health Education, the DfE also encourages schools to deliver age-appropriate sex education if they feel their pupils need this information:

“It will be for primary schools to determine whether they need to cover any additional content on sex education to meet the needs of their pupils. Many primary schools already choose to teach some aspects of sex education and will continue to do so, although it is not a requirement…."

“It is important that the transition phase before moving to secondary school supports pupils’ ongoing emotional and physical development effectively. The Department continues to recommend therefore that all primary schools should have a sex education programme tailored to the age and the physical and emotional maturity of the pupils. It should ensure that both boys and girls are prepared for the changes that adolescence brings and – drawing on knowledge of the human life cycle set out in the national curriculum for science – how a baby is conceived and born”

As in the DfE guidance, Relationships Education is defined as teaching about the fundamental building blocks and characteristics of positive relationships, with particular reference to friendships, family relationships, and relationships with other children and with adults.