APS PSHE and Sex Education Policy

ASHURST CE AIDED PRIMARY SCHOOL

Personal, Social and Health Education,

Relationships and Sex Education Policy

Our Vision for Ashurst:

Guided by our Christian values of Love, Hope and Joy, we endeavour to motivate and inspire everyone to become lifelong, resilient, enthusiastic and successful learners. We aim to nurture and support pupils to meet the challenges of our ever-changing world, and to be responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society. We encourage all pupils to become happy confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives.

Our vision is rooted in the biblical text found in 1 John 3:18

“Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

Context

All schools must provide a curriculum that is broadly based, balanced and meets the needs of all pupils. Under section 78 of the Education Act 2002 and the Academies Act 2010, a PSHE curriculum:

• Promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and
• Prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.

The Church of England states in “Valuing All God’s Children” (2019), that Relationships and Sex education should: “Make it clear that relationships and sex education is designed to prepare all pupils for the future, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. RSE must promote gender equality and LGBT equality, and it must challenge discrimination. RSE must take the needs and experiences of LGBT people into account, and it should seek to develop understanding that there are a variety of relationships and family patterns in the modern world.” (Page 34)

Our Intent

At Ashurst CE Aided Primary School, personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education is an embedded part of our broad and balanced curriculum. We fully embrace the Jigsaw programme and meet half termly to introduce and review our learning. Children’s’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development is at the heart of our school ethos. British Values are promoted through the overarching aims and objectives of PSHE by supporting our children to become healthy and responsible members of society, as well as preparing them for life and work in modern Britain. Our PSHE and RSE curriculums reflect the needs of our pupils and are accessible to all.

• They aim to help our children understand how they are developing personally and socially, and provide opportunities to discuss many of the moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up.
• Our children are encouraged to develop their sense of self-worth by playing a positive role in contributing to our school and the wider community
• We provide our children with opportunities to learn about their rights and responsibilities and appreciate what it means to be a member of a diverse society. 
• We aim to equip pupils with a sound understanding of risks together with the knowledge and skills necessary to make safe and informed decisions in life, including the online world.

Implementation 

Our PSHE curriculum has been carefully planned and structured to reflect the needs of our children in line with the National Curriculum requirements for RSHE. The curriculum is broken into six ‘Puzzles’ and includes many opportunities to link to British Values and SMSC (spiritual, moral, social and cultural development).

The spiral curriculum starts in EYFS and follows the children through to Year 6.  Themes are re-visited, gradually extending thinking, expanding knowledge and developing skills. The distribution of the lessons compliments key campaigns throughout the year such as Anti-bullying Week, Internet Safety Day and Sun Awareness Week.

There are occasions where teachers may feel it necessary to teach PSHE because of issues that may have arisen in their own class, school or within the local community/world. PSHE is integral to the development of children’s values for them to become positive citizens in a forever changing world. 

PSHE is covered within specific lessons in each year group as well as in assemblies and is taught within the wider curriculum. We invite appropriate members of the community to visit our school to enrich our PSHE curriculum. Our school displays reinforce our PSHE curriculum. We celebrate awareness days and key events during the year to enhance children’s understanding of PSHE statements, such as Black History Month and Children in Need, helping to provide our children with opportunities to learn and understand local, national and worldwide issues.

Outside our PSHE curriculum, our school’s values contribute towards the development of our children. Our teaching approach places great emphasis upon collaboration and cooperation. Group work is a key element of teaching and learning within each class and contributes to positive caring relationships within our school. Our children are encouraged to show leadership in our school through such roles as Young Ashurst Governors, Prayer Leaders, Worship Warriors, minute takers, maintaining the Children’s notice board and being Y6 Monitors.

Impact

Our PSHE curriculum provides our children with a chance to reflect, learn and apply these crucial skills taught within PSHE.

Through our curriculum, our children learn how to stay safe physically, mentally and online; they understand how to be healthy, how to build self-esteem, resilience and problem-solving strategies, how to develop and maintain positive and healthy relationships and to have respect for themselves and others. We aim to prepare our children for the next stage in their education, as well as preparing them for adult life.

Mental Health and Wellbeing

All children deserve the opportunity to experience happy, fulfilled and successful lives. At Ashurst CE Aided Primary we acknowledge that mental wellbeing is a normal part of daily life, in the same way as physical health.

 At Ashurst CE Aided Primary we nurture our bodies, minds, each other and our environment. By providing opportunities for learning outdoors, we aim to connect children and staff with their natural environment. We embrace the benefits this brings for mental health and physical and emotional wellbeing. 

We promote pupils’ self-control and ability to self-regulate and recommend strategies for doing so. This will enable them to become confident in their ability to achieve well and persevere even when they encounter setbacks or when their goals are distant, and to respond calmly and rationally to setbacks and challenges. This integrated, whole-school approach to the teaching and promotion of health and wellbeing has the potential to positively impact on behaviour and attainment.

Pupils are also taught about the benefits of hobbies, interests and participation in their own communities. We encourage children to recognise that they are social beings and that spending time with others, taking opportunities to consider the needs of others and practising service to others, including in organised and structured activities and groups, are beneficial for health and wellbeing. Engaging in activities that promote mental well-being can indirectly contribute to improving overall health by alleviating stress, improving sleep patterns, improving attention span and boosting the immune system.

Children are inspired to follow their dreams when they leave school, whether that be to secure a job, begin vocational training or go on to further education.

At Ashurst CE Aided primary School we recognise that we have a shared responsibility to prepare our children to achieve mental, physical and economic wellbeing in a local, national and global context.

As part of this commitment to well-being we are introducing five ‘Wellbeing Days’. These will include classwork on different themes followed by the opportunity to choose and take part in a variety of Wellbeing activities that promote mental health. These activities will be designed to appeal to different people at different times and may include physical activities, mindfulness or practicing techniques like deep breathing, creative activities,

gratitude practice, connecting with others or activities that challenge our minds and expand our knowledge.

PSHE

Our aim in PSHE is to increase pupils’ wellbeing by teaching and discussing the characteristics of, and the link between, good physical health and mental wellbeing.

This includes children learning about the benefits and importance of daily exercise, good nutrition and sufficient sleep, and giving pupils the language and knowledge to understand the normal range of emotions that everyone experiences. This use of age appropriate vocabulary supports children to articulate how they are feeling and to develop the language to talk about their bodies, health, and emotions and judge whether what they are feeling and how they are behaving, is appropriate for the situations that they experience.

Children learn what they can do to protect and support their own and others’ health and wellbeing, including simple self-care techniques, and a range of activities that can support health and wellbeing.

PSHE fosters inclusivity by celebrating and valuing our differences and actively encouraging an atmosphere of openness, respect and collaboration.

SEND Provision and Equal Opportunities

At Ashurst we promote respect for all and celebrate differences in our school community. We recognise and acknowledge that PSHE has an important role to play in removing stereotyping. We respect the right of our children, their families and our staff, to hold different beliefs, religious or otherwise, and understand that sometimes these may differ from our approach to some aspects of Relationships, Health and Sex Education. We ensure the curriculum is adapted to ensure children of all ages and with differing learning needs can access all learning opportunities provided in PSHE.

Relationship and Sex Education

“Parents have the right to request that their child be withdrawn from some or all of sex education delivered as part of statutory Relationships and Sex Education” DfE Guidance p. 17

At Ashurst, puberty is taught as a statutory requirement of Health Education and covered by our Jigsaw PSHE Programme in the ‘Changing Me’ Puzzle (in the second half of the summer term), and we conclude from the DFE Guidance that sex education refers to Human Reproduction. In order to teach this in a scientific context and knowing that National Curriculum Science requires children to know how mammals reproduce, we have opted to teach this within our Science curriculum, not within PSHE or Relationships and Sex Education, as we believe this is most appropriate for our children. Therefore, the parental right to withdraw their child is not applicable. However, we are more than happy to discuss the content of the curriculum with parents and carers if they wish.

When teaching RSE there are four main aims of teaching RSE:

• to enable children to understand and respect their bodies,
• to help children develop positive and healthy relationships appropriate to their age and development,
• to support children to have positive self-esteem and body image and to empower them,
• to be safe and safeguarded.

Each year group will be taught appropriate to their age and developmental stage. If a question from a child arises and the teacher feels it would be inappropriate to answer. (for example, because of its mature or explicit nature), this information with be shared with parents and carers by their child’s class teacher. The question will not be answered to the child or class if it is outside the remit of that year group’s programme.

Assessment

The approach to assessment, record keeping and reporting of this subject area follows our whole school policy guidelines. All children’s contributions are valued, and work is regularly marked and assessed against the key skills. Children are encouraged to improve their own learning performance through the school marking policy.

Monitoring and Evaluation

This policy will be monitored by the subject leader who will be responsible for gathering samples of curriculum work. Appropriate additional evidence e.g. photos of activities/displays/visits/assemblies etc will also be kept. PSHE plans will be monitored to ensure that the key skills are being effectively taught and match the needs and abilities of the pupils.