Intent | Our PSHE curriculum ensures children develop the knowledge and understanding of how to keep mentally and physically healthy. It develops learners who are emotionally resilient and have the skills to deal with changes and challenges in their lives. It aims to build children’s understanding of themselves and others in their immediate community and develop the skills to secure and maintain healthy relationships with others both in real life and when interacting online. It gives children the opportunity to set themselves goals and aspirations and become confident members of a multicultural society. |
Implementation
| Relationships and health education is taught through our personal, social, health education curriculum. The children are taught PSHE through a spiral approach with 6 key themes running throughout and being revisited in each year group: Being Me in My World, Celebrating Differences, Dreams and Goals, Healthy Me, Relationships and Changing Me. Our PSHE curriculum is enhanced through visitors and links with external agencies e.g. NSPCC and their Speak Out, Stay Safe. PSHE is taught through a discussion based approach with the children understanding that it is important to share their views and emotions in a safe, secure environment. Learning and discussion is recorded in Jigsaw Journals across the school.
Safeguarding including online safety, SMSC and British Values are embedded throughout the programme and within our assemblies. |
Introduction
From 2020, ‘Relationship, Health and Sex Education’ became compulsory in all primary schools in England and our policy sets out our approach at The Gateway Primary Academy to the teaching of this topic. Our policy is based on the statutory guidance given in the Relationships, Sex and Education Guidance, DFE (2019)
At The Gateway, we recognise that our pupils are growing up in an increasingly complex world and are living their lives both on and offline. We recognise that while this presents many exciting and positive opportunities, it also presents challenges and risks. Through our teaching, we recognise that our pupils must know how to be safe and healthy, and how to manage their academic, personal and social lives in a positive way.
We recognise that our relationship teaching presents a huge opportunity to help our pupils develop. The knowledge and attributes gained will support their own and others’ wellbeing and attainment, and will help our pupils to become successful and happy with the skills to deal with challenges in the future. Our teaching will provide our pupils will the information of how and when to ask for help and where to access support.
Our school vision and values
All of the content within our Relationship, Health and Sex policy supports our school vision, which is for all of our pupils to achieve their full potentially physically, socially and academically whilst preparing them for a successful future in a multicultural society by celebrating diversity and embracing our British values.
The teaching of relationships at the Gateway is supported by our work on our school values, which are:
Our values are central to our weekly assemblies and are celebrated in our weekly Golden Time assembly with children displaying them being given our Gateway Stars. The core values of relationship, health and sex teaching also links with our Golden Time system by encouraging children to take responsibility for their own behaviour and changing it.
Aims
The aims of relationships, health and sex curriculum at our school are to:
Relationships education focuses on teaching the fundamental building blocks and characteristics of positive relationships including:
Health education focuses on:
Our relationship education is taught through:
At The Gateway, we use the Jigsaw Scheme of Work to support our teaching of relationship education as it matches the requirements set out in the RSE statutory guidance (2019). Jigsaw is split into 6 puzzle pieces which are developed and built on year by year progressively (see below).
Jigsaw was chosen to deliver our relationship curriculum as it breaks down the core knowledge linked to relationships into manageable sized units and is carefully sequenced, which ensures its’ content is age appropriate. Our teachers develop the content in Jigsaw to match the needs of their pupils and add in well-chosen opportunities and contexts for our pupils to embed new knowledge so it can be used confidently in real life situations.
Piece 1 - Being me in my world
This puzzle piece focuses on children developing an understanding of their own feelings, their community in school, working with others and developing a class charter to allow everyone to be treated with respect in class.
Piece 2 - Celebrating differences
This unit focuses on developing positive attributes, such as: friendships and how kindness, integrity, generosity and honesty are key parts of respecting differences.
Piece 3 - Dreams and goals
Central to this unit is encouraging children to set themselves goals (both academic and personal) and then support them in identifying the steps they need to take to be successful. The children focus on developing their perseverance and resilience which they then use across the curriculum.
Piece 4 - Healthy Me
Healthy Me builds on our work in Science and PE developing an understanding of the importance of exercise, sleep, healthy diet and keeping safe. It also covers stranger danger and what to do if you feel unsafe both online and offline.
Piece 5 – Relationships
Throughout this unit, we focus on healthy friendships, family relationships and other relationships which children many come across. This is to enable our pupils to recognise the features of relationships which will lead to happiness and security. This will also help them to recognise any less positive relationships (both online and in real life) when they encounter them and how to seek help. We also look at how friendships can promote good mental wellbeing.
Piece 6 - Changing Me
Changing Me covers preparing for changes, for example transition to the next year group or changes in our body or lives for example: puberty.