PSHE (including SRE)

What is PSHE and SRE?

PSHE stands for Personal, Social and Health Education. It covers the education of the whole child and the choices they make. SRE stands for Sex and Relationship Education and is a new, compulsory part of this policy. SRE is integrated into the key concepts of PSHE.

Our definition for KS2- PSHE is learning about how to keep ourselves safe and healthy, physically and emotionally as well as understanding differences.

Our definition for Foundation and KS1- PSHE is learning about ourselves.

Our definition of SRE – Exploring the emotional, social and physical aspects of growing up, having relationships, engaging in sex, and learning about human sexuality and sexual health.

Intention:

“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Nelson Mandela

We want our children to leave Bishop Alexander LEAD Academy being resilient, responsible, respectful, aspirational, caring and independent (our school values). We also want our children to ‘broaden their horizons’ and have knowledge of the world outside our school, including different faiths and religions and different relationships. We intend for our children to be emotionally intelligent; able to understand their own feelings and emotions and be fully equipped to deal with various emotional situations.

Through our PSHE curriculum we aim to widen our children’s knowledge, skills and understanding of themselves and others around them. PSHE is a hugely important subject, especially in today’s world. We want our children to have the knowledge to make their own informed decisions in life.  We want our children to have the skills to question evidence that they are given and to interrogate; not accepting information at face value. We want them to be able to reflect upon information and be able to make independent, informed decisions.S We want our children to know and understand our British Values; to know how to debate reasonably; to understand their whole self and how to keep themselves healthy. We want our children to be kind, caring individuals who respect others. We do this through the four main concepts of PSHE; citizenship, keeping healthy, sex and relationships and drugs and keeping safe. We ensure the application of British Values runs through all of these.

Through our teaching we consistently aim to raise awareness of PSHE as a subject and as a potential career field for the future. The children should leave our school knowing many different career prospects for those with a thorough understanding of PSHE such as politicians and environmentalists. Careers which are inherently linked with the subject and also those which use the skills that PSHE as a subject teaches.

They should be excited by PSHE and eager to learn more, questioning what they have learnt so far. They should be aware of current world issues and able to debate them within their learning. The children should be fully invested in the purpose of their learning and understand the importance of understanding themselves and others. They should learn what it means to be empathic and strive to learn about people with different lifestyles or who follow different religions to them.

How do we teach PSHE?

The planning and teaching of PSHE is implemented by following the SCARF programme. This is created by CORAM Life who are: “the leading provider of health, wellbeing, relationships, and drugs education to almost half a million children across the UK, delivered under the strapline ‘Helping Children Make Healthy Choices’”. The SCARF programme ensures that all staff are clear which vocabulary they should be introducing in each topic.  PSHE is taught consistently across school; children are hooked in with a stimulus which always leads to an element of debate. This element is key in developing the children’s critical thinking skills and enabling them to make their own, personal yet informed decisions. Clear expectations of the teaching of PSHE are available to all staff (appendix 1)

Our topics are structured so that the children can work through 4 key concepts of PSHE; CitizenshipKeeping Healthy, Sex and Relationships and Drugs Education and Staying Safe. Running through this is the application of British Values. This is how we define them:

Citizenship: Belonging to a specific country or group and carrying out the responsibilities of that group.

Keeping Healthy: Understanding how to keep our body and mind healthy.

Sex and Relationships: Exploring the emotional, social and physical aspects of growing up, having relationships, engaging in sex, and learning about human sexuality and sexual health.

Drugs Education and staying safe: Provide information, facts and consequences about drugs, upon which individuals can base decisions and make informed choices.

We structure our curriculum using whole school topics and we focus on specific subjects in blocks over a number of weeks. This enables us to go deeper into subjects and to make meaningful connections with other subjects.