Intent

Children at St John’s will receive a comprehensive Personal, Social, Emotional, Economic and Relationships Education (PSHER Education) which supports their health and wellbeing; relationships; and understanding of the world and will serve them now and in the future. It helps pupils to develop the knowledge, skills and attributes they need to thrive as individuals, family members and citizens. From making responsible decisions to managing their emotions, PSHER Education helps pupils to manage many of the most critical opportunities, challenges and responsibilities they will face growing up. Research shows that pupils who are emotionally healthy do better at school. PSHE education helps pupils to develop skills and attributes— like teamwork, communication, and resilience — that are crucial to navigating the challenges and opportunities of the modern world.

Statutory Duties

PSHER Education makes a crucial contribution to our statutory duties including adhering to the Education Act 2002, which requires all schools to teach a curriculum that is ‘broadly based, balanced and meets the needs of pupils’. The Act also states that Schools must ‘promote the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and prepare pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life’. It is also our duty to prioritise keeping pupils safe as indicated in Keeping Children Safe in Education 2021.

Implementation

The teaching of Personal, Social, Emotional, Economic and Relationships Education (PSHER Education) across St John’s follows the Department for Education’s Statutory Guidance on Relationships and Health Education.

The statutory content is covered by learning opportunities for Key Stage 1 and 2 across three core themes:

• Health and Wellbeing
• Relationships
• Living in the Wider World

While our PSHER Curriculum is based on the PSHE Association’s Programme of Study, it has been tailored to the needs of our school’s community using:

• Public Health England’s local area data on Child and Maternal Health (CHIMAT)
• Feedback from children, parents and staff.

Our PSHER Education Curriculum provides a comprehensive programme that integrates, but is not limited to, statutory content. Seeking to provide a high quality PSHER programme means that we also cover economic wellbeing, careers and enterprise education, as well as education for personal safety, including assessing and managing risk. These areas are mainly covered with the 'Living in the Wider World' core theme – and though not yet statutory, we feel are vital parts of our school's curriculum.

The highest quality learning opportunities are created through:

• Comprehensive long and medium term plans tailored specifically for our school community which are supported by PSHE Association resources and latest best practice guidance.
• Breadth of learning from KS1 to KS2, where knowledge, skills and attributes are developed progressively using a spiral curriculum. This builds on the work in the Early Years Foundation Stage, where pupils are given building blocks which will prepare them for PSHER Education by following the Early Years Framework (in particular the areas of Personal, Social, and Emotional Development and Communication and Language) through a thematic play based curriculum.
• Explicit teaching of vocabulary for each topic. By revisiting and building upon abstract ideas/vocabulary (e.g. safety) within and between each year group, we seek to embed the children’s ability to express themselves.
• A bespoke curriculum for children with Special Educational Needs to ensure that their needs are met. The programme integrates, but is not limited to, statutory content. ‘The World I Live In’ section covers aspects of PSHER relating to careers education, economic wellbeing, personal safety (including assessing and managing risk) and preparing for adulthood. Though not yet a statutory, this learning is critical to support different levels of independence that pupils with SEND may have.
• Making cross curricular links where possible so that children are encouraged to apply other learning. Over the past 2 years, work has been done to particularly strengthen the links with Computing, Science, and History. Following a year trialling the PSHER Curriculum, our topics were made cross curricular to ensure excellent links for the children.

• Teaching school values within each PSHER topic. This links learning in PSHER (and other subjects) to the wider school focus on British values, communicated namely through collective worships.

• Delivery that is crafted to children’s needs, knowledge, skills, and attributes to ensure that learning sticks and can be applied to the children’s lives.
• Collaborative learning, where children work together towards goals, exploring different roles within a team.
• Use of use of Baseline and End Point Assessments for each lesson or series of lessons to ensure that Assessment for Learning and Assessment of Learning is built into teaching.
• Use of whole class Learning Journals to celebrate the progress that children make as a group.
• PSHER specific training to support teachers’ subject knowledge and skills; capacity to create safe learning environments; and ability to manage any disclosures that occur.

Impact

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice) and asking key assessment questions to a range of children.
• Monitoring teacher planning.
• Celebrating images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• Monitoring the Baseline and End Point Assessments.
• Monitoring whole class Learning Journals.