Settlebeck School, Long Lane, Sedbergh, Cumbria, LA10 5AL
Settlebeck School, Long Lane, Sedbergh, Cumbria, LA10 5AL

Curriculum Statement PSHE

Lead Teacher: Mrs. H Waring

Personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education is an important and necessary part of all students’ education. It equips students with the knowledge and skills they need to live healthy, safe, productive, responsible and balance lives through the core themes of health and well-being, relationships and living in the wider world. Evidence shows that well-delivered PSHE programs have an impact on both academic and non-academic outcomes for students (PSHE Association 2019). The school values of respect, responsibility and aspiration, the school ethos and British Values are at the core of our PSHE curriculum. Our intent is to provide and academic PSHE curriculum that provides opportunities for pupils to reflect on and clarify their own values and attitudes and explore complex and a conflicting range of values and attitudes they may encounter now and in the future. 

 Aims   

The overarching aim for our PSHE curriculum is to 

  • Enable our students to become successful learners who enjoy learning, make progress, and achieve.  
  • Enable our students to become confident individuals who can lead safe, healthy, and fulfilling lives. 
  • Enable our students to become responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society.  

There is significant variability in how primary schools approach teaching PSHE and our students enter secondary school with wide ranging experiences, knowledge and understanding. Some of our students have limited or closed opinions about the world they live in. Often our students have not been exposed to many of life’s complications and daily challenges that students in other areas have experienced, sometimes leading to a certain level of naivety in comparison to others of the same age. We consider this in our planning and delivery.  

 To succeed in PSHE our students need to; 

  • Know how to be safe in all aspects of their daily lives from crossing railway lines, drug and alcohol misuse, sexual activity, gangs, and peer influence. 
  • Know how to be healthy – exercise, diet, sleep, puberty, mental health and first aid. 
  • Understand how to live and be part of a multi-cultural society including diversity, discrimination, identity, positive and respectful relationships (including sexual and harassment), extremism and radicalisation, and what it means to be British. 
  • Understand the world of work and opportunities for the future including setting goals, aspirations, and employability skills and work experience. 
  • Know how to manage economic aspects of life including bank accounts, mortgages, debt, financial choices, cybercrime, and gambling dangers. 

The curriculum focuses on providing the broadest opportunity for all students to develop the knowledge and understanding to become mature, knowledgeable, and informed members of the wider community and learn about their place in the world and their responsibility as citizens within their communities, nationally and as citizens of the world. Year 7 and 8 students learn how to fit into a secondary school environment and about the importance of relationships, developing this further with Year 8 students to look at identity and introducing sexual relationships at a basic level. Furthermore, as students progress into Year 9 and 10 these areas are built upon to cover intimate relationships, including consent, contraception, and pornography, as well as addressing extremism and radicalisation. Year 7 & 8 investigate emotional wellbeing, learn about puberty and drug and alcohol misuse. As students’ progress through the curriculum, they look more closely at mental health and in more depth at alcohol and drug misuse and its consequences, along with gangs, knife crime and influences. In Year 7 and 8, students learn about simple financial decision making, saving and digital literacy, In Year 9 and 10, they progress onto learning about safe financial choices, budgeting, consumerism and online grooming. In the final year students start to prepare for living in the wider world to include first aid, how to manage their stress and keeping healthy. 

External agencies are often used to support learning, including specialist First Aid trainers, revision experts, careers advisors, college visits, visits to 6th forms and where possible medical professionals. 

When designing our curriculum, we have considered the individual needs of all our students. To ensure that students with SEND have the opportunity to develop the same knowledge and skills as their peers, we adopt a range of strategies within the classroom such as in class support from a teaching assistant. It is the policy of the school to not withdraw students for interventions during the times this lesson is taught.  Communication from Pastoral leads allows teaching staff to be aware of individuals who may find the topic challenging or distressing and this is addressed by individual teachers.  

 

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