PSHE and RSE

What Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education including Relationships Education, is:

Our PSHE education, including statutory Relationships and Health education provides a framework though 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.

Our school’s PSHE provision supports our school’s 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. 

How PSHE education, including Relationships Education, is provided and who is responsible for this

At Shankhill School we use SCARF, a comprehensive scheme of work for PSHE and Wellbeing education. An overview of SCARF can be found in our appendices[1]. It covers all of the DfE's statutory requirements for Relationships Education and Health 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. The school council are also consulted as part of our planning, to ensure pupil voice in considered and fed into the planned programme.

Our PSHE subject lead, Mrs Batey, works in conjunction with teaching staff in each year group and the phase leads (EYFS, KS1 and KS2) and is responsible for ensuring that all staff are equipped with the knowledge, skills and resources to deliver PSHE education confidently. Teachers can access a range of teaching support resources within SCARF, including guidance documents and teacher training films. Any teacher wanting further support should contact the PSHE subject lead in the first instance to discuss their training needs.

Class teachers follow the suggested six half termly units provided by SCARF for each year. We value the breadth and depth of learning within PSHE and how this prepares our children for their next stage of development, safety and self-care and so teach PSHE in single age lessons so that every child receives age and stage-appropriate learning. Lessons are generally a weekly standalone PSHE lesson or can be cross curricular. The lesson plans list the specific learning objectives for each lesson and provide support for how to teach the lessons; class teachers and our PSHE lead often discuss this on an informal basis.

We have chosen SCARF as our PSHE resource because the lessons build upon children’s prior learning; we have assessed the content and feel that it is relevant and sensitive to the needs of our children. There is planned progression across the SCARF scheme of work, so that children are increasingly and appropriately challenged as they move up through the school. Assessment is completed by the class teacher using the SCARF Summative Assessment ‘I can…’ statements, alongside the lesson plan learning outcomes to demonstrate progression of both skills and knowledge. See section 7 for more details on assessment. Find out about SCARF's three different assessment strands here.

What is being taught 

In the appendices can be found the SCARF medium term planning for both Key stage 1 and 2 and the Early Years Foundation Stage[2] as well an overview of our Science programmes of study[3].

  • Shankhill & SCARF long term planning document 
  • Shankhill & SCARF medium term planning documents 
  • [1] Relationships and Sex Education can also be found within National Curriculum Science 

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.

Please read the PSHE Policy for further information and the documents below.

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